High school kids rock. Especially the ones I had the pleasure of meeting last week at the Massachusetts State DECA Conference in downtown Boston. DECA is an organization that aims to empower young people to pursue careers in marketing, management, and entrepreneurship through education and leadership development events. 185,000 high schools students participate through 5,000 chapters across the U.S.

Along with my colleagues, Jeremy Butler (DECA alumni) and Jon Kay, I served as a judge in the Entrepreneurship category and Grasshopper donated scholarships for the top three participants in our category. The scholarships we gave will help out the winners of our category with travels costs for the DECA National conference. Over the course of three days, we each heard from between ten and fifteen groups of young entrepreneurs who pitched us their entrepreneurial ventures. Their businesses ranged from internet properties to landscaping companies and everything in between. The vast majority were outstanding.

We were also given the opportunity to do a couple of workshops on Friday afternoon. Jonathan presented on generating buzz and Jeremy and I teamed up for a workshop on the basics of ecommerce. The workshops were well received, but at that point I think our audience was ready to go to the pool or go shopping.

These were some of the most ambitious, smart, and outstanding young people I’ve met in a long time. When I was 18, I was, well, not doing anything close to what these kids are achieving. I was impressed by not only the events’ organization and production quality, but also by the sheer size. 2000 high school students, parents, and teachers from around Massachusetts packed into the function room for the final award ceremony. Donna McFadden, the Mass State Advisor, did an outstanding job organizing the event and made sure we had a front row seats for the awards and the playing of Grasshopper’s Entrepreneurs Can Change the World video.

As a first-time participant at DECA, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and look forward to participating next year. I’d be willing to bet that some of these kids will go on to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and that I’ll be reading about them in a few years. Also, congratulations to all of the students who made it to the National Conference in Kentucky. We just might see you there.

A virtual office can be a great asset for any small business. It can be even more valuable for an entrepreneur just getting a company up and running. With the economy still struggling and everyone working hard to stay profitable, cost-cutting measures are vital.

A virtual office can help you save money in three main areas:

1. Office Space

   Whether you are working from home, a coffee shop or a co-working space, you can save a lot of money by not leasing out a big office. There are no costs for rent, furniture, office equipment or utilities.

   Even more importantly, if you find yourself traveling a lot, working from home or just not spending much time in the office, you are not locked into a lease.

2. Travel Expenses

   With the average cost of commuting ranging from $110-$648 a month, traveling to work can be expensive. You have gas, maintenance and for some, tolls.

   If you don’t have an office space to drive to, you don’t have to pay commuter expenses. Use this calculator to figure out your commuter costs.

3. Communications

   Every business needs a phone and a phone number to communicate with their customers. Phone equipment can be expensive though and so can a professional phone system.

   A virtual phone system is a cost-effective solution that can help you sound professional to clients, ensure you can be reached at any time (regardless of where you are) and requires no extra equipment.

   Plus, the main greeting and extension features included in a virtual phone system allow you to cut out the cost of a receptionist.

A virtual office is a great way to get your business going without incurring all the huge costs. It can even be beneficial for larger companies looking to save money.

It was a big month for Grasshopper in the news as our ‘Entrepreneurs Can Change the World’ video helped raise $20,000 for charity and the launch of our newest video ‘The New Dork’ made headlines all over the internet. Check it out!

• Learn Social Media by Example: Chocolate Grasshoppers!

  Thoughtpick breaks down the Grasshopper re-brand campaign and explores how a small business can use social media.

• 12 Useful Resources for Entrepreneurs

  Fuel Your Venture gives us 12 great tools for entrepreneurs, including the Grasshopper virtual phone system.

• Does Your Small or Online Business Have a Toll Free Number?

  Denise Griffits shows us how she uses Grasshopper and how a toll free number can be a great asset for any small business.

• “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World” Video Helps Charity

  Youth Venture discusses how the Grasshopper “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World” video helped raise $20,000 for their organization.

• Grasshopper Raises $20,000 for Ashoka with Great Video

  Ashoka showcases the Grasshopper “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World” video and how it helped raise $20,000 for their Youth Venture organization.

• A Must-See Video: Entrepreneurs Can Change the World

  Generation Big features the Grasshopper “Entrepreneurs Can Change the World” video.

• Real Companies Using Social Media: Grasshopper Empowers Entrepreneurs to Succeed

  Mighty Brand blog talks with Ambassador of Buzz Jonathan Kay about how Grasshopper uses social media.

• The New Dork: How Young Grasshoppers Become Super Ninjas

  Media Bistro features the latest Grasshopper video ‘The New Dork – Entrepreneur State of Mind’.

• Now You’re The New Dork (Video)

  Tech Crunch showcases the newest video from Grasshopper – The New Dork.

If you are a regular reader of the Grasshopper blog, you know that a main feature of our virtual phone system is the toll free number. What many people may not know is that we also offer local numbers for cities across the United States.

While a toll free number is a great way to give your customers an easy way to communicate with you, a local number can have a positive effect as well.

There are two main advantages to having a local number:

Create a Local Presence

The great thing about having a local number is that you can create a presence in a particular city. As a bigger company, it can be beneficial to have local numbers in cities where large percentages of your customer base live.

Local numbers also allow you to increase your local presence through local business listings, phone books, online search results and more. This could prove to be especially important as search engines like Google continue to show more and more localized results to searchers.

Sense of Community w/ Customers

The second main advantage to having a local phone number for your business, is the ability to create a sense of community with your customers. By achieving a presence in the city, you are establishing a connection with the people who live there, the people who are your customers and potential customers. As a large company, it is important to be able to connect with people rather than being a faceless corporation.

Local numbers can be a valuable asset for a business when used by themselves or even when combined with a toll free number. The great thing is, no matter how many different numbers you have (toll free or local), with a virtual phone number, all calls can be forwarded to the same place.

Have you considered a local number for your business?

Download the MP3 (right click on link)

I don’t think online chat is the best way to communicate. In fact, it’s probably the worst. So it may surprise you to hear that we’ve been considering adding chat support to our lineup of support options at Grasshopper.

Why do I think chat sucks?

For one thing, you never really know if the other person is still there, if they’re AFK (that’s chatspeak for away from keyboard) or if they’ve fallen off the face of the planet (that’d be FOTFOTP).

Still, I’m convinced that there are great uses for it. For example, asking quick pre-sales questions when you’ve got laryngitis. That’s why I go out of my way to try other company’s chat support. I’m looking for the company that’s finally found a way to make it work.

I’m told that chat is great because it’s instantaneous and convenient. Well, if that’s true, why do I always feel like I’m waiting for the service rep on the other end to finish their 15 other chats before they finally get back to me? And why does it seem to take forever to finally get across the nature of my issue? I’m always wondering did they really get what my issue was or are they now just too embarrassed to ask me the 5th time around for further clarification.

But I’m like most people, when I have a problem, I’ll go for chat if I think that I’ll end up on hold for a long time when I call.  Unfortunately, I often find that I’m instantly chatting with a lower tier of service staffed by agents with the least experience. I’ve had more than one chat session end by the agent asking me to call instead because they don’t have the ability to help me. That was a real time saver.

So what’s a good solution for offering chat support that doesn’t suck? As far as I know, It doesn’t exist yet, but here’s my dos and don’ts:

• Do have a click to call button directly on the chat window that allows someone to simply call whoever they are chatting with. Instead of telling me to call in and then start all over explaining myself to a new agent, let us pick up where chat fell short and solve this issue quickly.

• Don’t force service reps to cover multiple chat sessions. It’s okay to take on another client when I’m not responding. It’s only fair. But when you’re chatting with, say, 10 clients simultaneously, you’re making no one happy.

• Don’t use chat as the training ground for support staff. Unlike the phone, you can’t immediately sense a client’s mood or assess their tone of voice. You need knowledgeable people staffing the chat so they can read between the lines.

Do you have any tips on how to make chat support better?

When you start a business there are obviously a number of things you need to think about. One of these things is your phone system. While it may seem fine to start with your cell phone, eventually you will want to expand, have a dedicated number, hire employees and so on. Using your personal cell phone probably isn’t going to work for long.

What is it you will really need though? A big expensive PBX system? An extra phone line? A virtual phone system is a low cost solution that may be exactly what you need.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing your phone system & plan:

Phone Numbers

Your phone number is the first thing to consider and hopefully will stay with you as your business grows. Your phone number will be how your customers communicate with you.

• Do you need a phone number or do you already have one?

  If you already have a toll free number (or local), Grasshopper offers number transfers (or number porting). At sign up, simply choose the ‘Transfer an existing number’ option. It’s easy and you won’t have to worry about updating business cards or marketing materials.

• Do you want a toll free number for your business?

  Toll free numbers can have an extremely positive impact on small businesses. It not only helps you look more professional to customers and potential customers but also has proven to elicit more calls from customers than a traditional number.

• What kind of toll free number?

  There are three main types of toll free numbers out there – True 800 numbers, general 800 numbers and vanity numbers. True 800 numbers contain the “800″ prefix, general 800 numbers include 888, 866 and 877, and vanity numbers spell out your product or business name. Here are some tips on choosing a toll free number.

Office Space

Have a home office? Work from the road? Have a co-working space? The great thing about a virtual phone system is that no matter where you work, you can have your business number forwarded to any number on any phone.

If you are often out of the office, it makes a lot of sense to have a virtual number. Anytime a potential customer calls, you won’t have to worry about missing the call because you can simply forward it to your cell phone. Receive a voicemail? The voice mail will be emailed to you, ensuring that you can listen to it or read it (with the Read Your Voicemail feature) at any time.

Additional Extensions

When you start a business, you intend to grow, make money, hire employees, etc. When thinking about your phone system, determine if you are going to need to add extensions. (Note – all Grasshopper plans offer unlimited extensions).

• How many employees do you have?

  If you have employees, you are probably going to want to give them their own extension with their own voice mail box. More importantly, if your employees are not located in the same place, it is even more important that they be able to have their own extension that can be forwarded to their phone.

• Do you have a sales or support team?

  If so, consider creating extensions dedicated to those departments. This way, when a call comes in, you know exactly what it is in regards to. Are you the sales and support team? By creating specific extensions, you will know what the call is about as it comes in, allowing you to mentally prepare before you even answer.

Minutes

This is probably the biggest factor when choosing your actual virtual phone system plan. For most 1-2 person operations, a plan with a large number of minutes probably isn’t going to be necessary. However, maybe you have a partner in another city, do a lot of cold calling, or the majority of your meetings are done over the phone.

You also need to factor in how many employees you have. How often are they on the phone? Do they speak with clients? Is there a sales or support team that is constantly taking calls? If so, a plan with more minutes will be necessary.

A virtual phone system is a great option for small businesses and Grasshopper offers three plans to fit your needs.

With the launch of Google Voice there has been a lot of talk about visual voicemail, voicemail transcription, voice to text, voicemail to email, etc. There are so many different terms it can be confusing!

Here at Grasshopper we offer a feature to our customers called ‘Read Your Voicemail‘. When a customer subscribes to this feature, they are emailed a transcription (and an MP3) of their voicemail immediately after receiving it (we offer human transcription at no extra charge for better accuracy). They can then read the voicemail on their computer or Smartphone.

However, one of the questions we often get is, ‘Do you offer visual voicemail?’ The answer to that is, it depends.

Here is how others describe ‘visual voicemail’:

Verizon

“Visual Voice Mail allows customers to see a list of all of their voice mail messages with important information, such as date and time of receipt, as well as message duration, in order to prioritize and efficiently manage their voice mail messages directly from their phones.”

Apple/iPhone

“When you decline or don’t answer a call, the caller hears a recorded greeting and can leave a voicemail message. On iPhone, visual voicemail lets you see a list of your messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete, without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions.”

AT&T

“AT&T Visual Voicemail provides an easier way to check voicemail. No more dialing into complicated voicemail menus. Visual Voicemail delivers messages directly to your handset, so you can review your voicemail messages anytime, anywhere, and in any order you choose.”

Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

“Visual Voicemail is the process of adding a visual aspect to phone voicemail such as allowing users to view a list of audio voicemail entries or even read transcripts of these voicemail as text. These voicemails are converted to text by use of advanced speech recognition software…”

What we have here at Grasshopper is voicemail transcription AND visual voicemail. Through the online account manager, you can see a list of your voicemails, phone numbers, times, dates, notes and more. And with the Read Your Voicemail feature, you get your voicemail transcribed and sent to you.

Do you define visual voicemail and voicemail transcription as the same thing?

About Me

When I was about 12 years old, mom would stop the car at the local bakery; I would jump out with a pocket full of change and buy a dozen pastries. It’s Sunday, family dinner day, and I knew what everyone’s favorite pastry was. I also knew which uncles had the most money and which ones did not. As everyone was finishing up their dinners, I set up a table and marked each pastry with a price. Needless to say, the uncles who drove BMW’s had the highest markup!

I’ve always wanted to make a billion dollars by creating something that makes people better at what they do. At my last job I thought I was doing just that, but I was wrong. I cut my losses and quit with about $10,000 in the bank.

Sustainability

Ten thousand dollars might look like it has enough zeroes in it, but it doesn’t go very far. I needed a way to stay afloat while I waited for the billion dollar idea to come to me.

A friend of mine was in the car business. He suggested I buy a car from him at wholesale and resell it myself. I did. I made $1,300 in about 5 hours of actual work!

After a few months, reselling 1 car turned into reselling around 10 cars a month. A one man operation is now a three man effort: myself and my two brothers Jad & Joad. We split profits (and headaches) three-ways, no questions asked as long as each is putting in their 100%. And everyone does.

Birth

It was time to make this car thing a real business. I was pushed into it, and I say pushed because my passion is software and I was starting to get worried that I’d end up being the poster child of sleaziness: a used car dealer!

Motors On Wheels created an entrepreneurial environment around me while I waited for an idea closer to my passion to flourish. It’s like being an entrepreneur to become an entrepreneur.

As Motors On Wheels grew, it became obvious that we needed to streamline many processes to keep our profit margins worthwhile. So we started looking for software solutions.

All the applications we found looked like they were developed in 100 B.C. On top of that, they were extremely overpriced. This is where the entrepreneur and the software developer in me collided to create the idea behind ZipZoomAuto.

Epiphany Day..Today

Yes. We use Ruby at ZipZoomAuto.

After about 8 months in development, ZipZoomAuto was running all of the online marketing for MoW. It was doing the bare minimum and it was very good at it.

The looming question at the time was, should we start giving out beta accounts? Answering no to that question is the biggest strategic mistake of my life. The second biggest mistake was creating cool features that nobody wanted. Some took months to develop and their only contribution was to bloat the codebase and add unnecessary bugs. Also, Motors On Wheels’ success provided us with a comfortable income which made mistakes at ZipZoomAuto feel less detrimental.

Things had to change. Charging for accounts was the only thing that could alter a bad ending.

As soon as a customer starts paying you for something you created (as opposed to a service you’re providing like selling cars) a few things start to happen that alter your behavior:

1. Paying customers will complain and you will listen & enhance.

2. Bugs & features will have real users attached to them and thus more weight.

3. Your application’s roadmap will be guided by your customers and not by cool ideas.

Today, 6 months after we started charging, we have 72 paid accounts with $0 spent on marketing. All we did was give out a few trial accounts to our friends in the car business and they started telling each other.

Our biggest edge over our competitors is we understand the domain of the car business more than any of them. After all, Motors On Wheels is what pays the mortgage. So far.

This brings up a very unusual business model for aspiring entrepreneurs. Work in a domain that is technologically challenged until you understand it profoundly. Then start a business that advances that domain by empowering its actors. Remember to charge early and to be obsessive about customer service.

Thanks to Edith Hernandez and Jonathan Kay for reading drafts of this.

Nash Kabbara is the co-founder of Motors On Wheels and ZipZoomAuto. After working for a few bosses, he decided to start a different kind of company where co-workers don’t feel like they have to be at work, but rather can’t wait to be there. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Houston. When not working towards his goal, you’ll find him reading, training for his next marathon, or simply enjoying life.

You can follow him @nkabbara or email him at nash[at]zipzoomauto.com

Something very cool happened recently, and I wanted to share it will all of you.

In May of 2009 we created a video that inspired and motivated entrepreneurs across the globe to follow their passion. Our video is nearing 350,000 views, and has been translated into over 4 different languages. A very interesting (and fun) reaction to this video was the blitz of phone calls and inquiries we received. Being the employee whose phone number is posted on the website, you can imagine I took the brunt of these calls. I heard everything from “Can I use this at our conference?” to “Can we use your video and just put our logo at the end?” (shame on the person who asked that).

Months later in December of last year I got a call from an IP lawyer over at Nestle (yes the people who make Nesquik, Butterfinger, and KitKat!). Apparently they loved our video and music so much they wanted to use it for an internal video. We weren’t super open to people using our music, and just changing the words around a little as we didn’t want what started as, a jolt of inspiration for entrepreneurs, to be tainted.

However, they brought an interesting offer to the table…they were willing to give us money in exchange for our cooperation.

When I mentioned this to our co-founder, he laughed and said no thank you. It wasn’t about the money for us. Before I could even get back to my desk, he stopped me and said “Wait, how about a donation?” I brought the idea to Nestle, and what started as a proposal of a few thousand dollars quickly turned into 5…10…and finally a $20,000 offer!! Anyone who read our case study knows that between Music Production ($10,000), Design/Development ($5,208), and Copywriting ($2,750) our video only cost $17,958 to make.

We were actually able to make MORE money for charity and social entrepreneurship than our video even cost to make. How freaking cool is that?? I love it.

We decided we wanted to donate the money to Ashoka (http://www.ashoka.org). Ashoka Youth Venture aims to help an entire generation of young people develop as leaders that will improve their communities now and throughout their lives by inspiring and supporting them to launch and lead their own civic-minded organizations and businesses. Ashoka believes that the greatest contribution we can make to the world is to increase dramatically the number of change makers today and in every future generation. (Check out their blog to see more about how they do this on a day-to-day basis http://blog.youthventure.org/)

We here at Grasshopper really believe in what Ashoka is doing. We hope they can continue to make strides toward creating a world where each individual has the freedom, confidence, and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.

If you had $20,000 what charity/ non-profit would you support??