312. New Rules in Effect for Coworking Spaces Providing Mail Service
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
312. New Rules in Effect for Coworking Spaces Providing Mail Service
00:00:03,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking Spaces for eight years, and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today, I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry."
00:00:46,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. I'm so glad you're with me today. This is a super important episode for anyone in the US that is managing a mail program. And to be specific, that mail program includes your physical members in addition to your virtual mail members. So even if you don't sell a separate mail package, if you are receiving mail on behalf of your physical members,"
00:01:15,"then you need to be on record as a commercial mail receiving agency, C M R A, and you need to comply with the updates to their program. So Matt going joins me today an extra thank you. I've thanked him a couple of times now, but folks started asking questions. He and I had talked a while ago. He's clearly, you know,"
00:01:41,"this is his business. He's the CEO of Anytime Mailbox. And a lot of our members use Anytime Mailbox and get leads for Anytime Mailbox and use their platform to manage their mail. And I know Matt from being, well, I've known Matt for a long time, and he was on the G W A Board while I was on the board as well."
00:02:01,"So I got to know him a little bit better. So anyway, he is always having behind the scenes conversations about updates coming down the pipe and had warned me that these things were coming and then suddenly they're here. So we had a couple of questions from our Community, Manager University Group and our Everything Coworking Academy group, and folks were wondering, okay,"
00:02:23,"what are these updates? When do we need com to be compliant? So I kind of 9 1 1 Matt, and said, let's do this. And so we jumped on and the updates are pretty straightforward, but they require some work. And so you'll wanna get behind those. I think most importantly, you'll wanna decide how to frame this, how to address this."
00:02:41,"We, I will probably be doing some additional episodes on mail. It's been a while since I've talked about digital mail program, as can be part of your broader virtual office program. This is a default now for folks opening Coworking Spaces, which is awesome. And maybe that's because it's a default for me, and I'm working with folks who are opening Coworking spaces,"
00:03:02,"but they understand that it's an important revenue stream. I give an example when I was talking to Matt about a group in Denver who had a pretty specific use case around wanting to provide mail and packaging handling service and, you know, address services for a certain profile of member that they have. So it's becoming more and more important and many Coworking space operators will have mail as a pretty mail and virtual offices as a pretty significant portion of their revenue."
00:03:32,"It's a great way to build additional revenue streams into your business model that doesn't require additional space when you are operating at a pretty high occupancy level. It, it's also a way to serve your members and to serve other members of the community. So I could go on and on, and I will save that for another episode. So if you are in the us this is super important."
00:03:55,"If you're not in the US you can join us next week if you'd like these, this is a pretty detailed and technical episode that I wanted to make sure we got out there, but it's not really relevant to folks outside of the us. We have some great content teed up for you. In the next few weeks, we'll talk more about mail. We have Marina McCoy coming up from Hula."
00:04:15,"They have a 400 person waiting list, and you might have met, met her at Juicy, she was a business owner and member of Hula, and then was asked to kind of take over and she really runs the show there and shared a lot about Hula, how Hula came to be, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, we're not talking about Marina,"
00:04:36,"but she's coming up in a couple of weeks. So if you're not subscribed yet, hit that subscribe button and if you are, then we have some great content coming up for you. So stay tuned and have a great week. Welcome. I am here with Matt Golling, who is the CEO of Anytime Mailbox. And Matt has been on the Flex Uncensored podcast."
00:05:01,"He was on episode number 25. Thank you for joining us. And anytime Mailbox, I have a lot of fans, anytime Mailbox generates a lot of revenue. And not only that, for some of our members and our Startup school folks who get into the business and ramp up their mail program and also gives them a great tool to manage mail for their members."
00:05:26,"So we're not specifically talking about that today, but I just wanted to give we, we kind of are, if there's some overlap, I wanted to give some context and a thank you and a thank you because some of our members started saying, Hey, there are some updates to, you know, the requirements if you're a C M R A and I,"
00:05:44,"Matt had come to me months ago and said, Hey, this is happening, and you're kind of a subject matter expert and you know, kind of get invited to these conversations. You're like, we gotta keep an eyeball on this. And so I emailed Matt and I said, is it time? And he's like, yes, it's definitely time. We need to talk about this."
00:06:01,"So it's yes, here we're thanks for doing this. Yeah, no, again, I'm happy, I'm grateful that for the invitation, always good to see you. And, and it is, you know, mail mail is a, a, a I think, you know, I guess selfishly, but I know it to be true because I started the business because I was a virtual office customer for a couple of different locations."
00:06:26,"And, and I was very frustrated with the level of service provided around mail. And, and so that's how my business partner Marcel Buki and I started the business. We were like, this is like, gotta get better. I mean, this is, this is critical. And, and so we've been able to launch this business and I will say we are three weeks away from celebrating our 10 year anniversary."
00:06:45,"So we're very, very excited about that. I know, wild. So mail is a, is a critical piece of the flex space model. I wouldn't say in my mind, I think that it just is that one of the key reasons that folks are ordering SER or signing up to become a customer is because they need an address, right? That is,"
00:07:05,"that is it. And so it's super Critical. Wait, can I tell you that I, so I mentioned I'm in Truckee this week. The, the US Postal Service does not deliver to, like, we don't get service. I don't exactly know why that is, but it's, it's on one hand it's like kind of awesome. We don't get mail,"
00:07:26,"but you know, there's no like junk mail on the other hand, like, I try to order some like Bombas socks and they must use the postal service. So my socks did not arrive and I certainly cannot get business mail, you know, at my house. Yeah. So that's kind of a weird example, but I do think now more than ever,"
00:07:44,"you know, people can live wherever they want, work from home, and you don't wanna use your home address. And, you know, and there's a lot of reasons people might need a business address, but I think more than ever, right? So it's an important service to focus on and make sure we're, it's getting it right. It's not sexy,"
00:08:00,"but it's critical. It, it's an, it's a, it's a key infrastructure piece for any, any small business, any business. And certainly these solopreneurs entrepreneurs who are, you know, oftentimes the, the core customer for, for, for the flex space facilities. And you gotta do a good job with it. So, so let me, let me jump in the U S P SS for a very long time since really I got into the,"
00:08:26,"into the business. So maybe going on 10 years has been looking at ways to upgrade and update the, what I will call ID verification of anyone using a third party to manage their mail. That's how I, that's how I think about it. So in our vernacular, the anytime mailbox vernacular, all the flex operators are operators and the folks receiving the mail are renters."
00:08:51,"Yeah. That's what we, we call them. That's what we can differentiate customers. And so the process has been, first off, a, an operator needs to be an approved C M R A, okay? A commercial mail receiving agent. And up until these rule changes, which, which were published. So lemme just say that first. So these rule changes were published on May 19th."
00:09:16,"The final rule changes. There was sort of a lot of back and forth about what was coming from the U S P S, but they were published. The final rules were published on May 19th. And the rules are in effect as of July 9th, which was early this month. Are You working on starting a Coworking space in 2023 or even 2024? We want to make sure you are set up for success."
00:09:42,"You hear me talk about this a lot. The biggest mistakes made in Coworking businesses are made before you ever open your doors, before you ever sign your lease, your lease, your product mix, and ensuring that your real estate deal and your offers align with your ideal future members are everything in terms of making sure that you set your business up for success."
00:10:08,"We can fix your marketing and your paint colors and your bathroom fixtures anytime, but we cannot redo your real estate deal or your product mix. We can, it's just really expensive. So we wanna help you get all of that right and be among the Coworking space operator operators that are sleeping well at night because they sign the right real estate deal and they know that their business is set up for ongoing sustainability and set up to meet their financial goals."
00:10:37,"So we'd love to have you join us in the Coworking Startup School. We cover getting started with your real estate search and signing your lease and picking your product mix and more. If you already have a location, over half of our members are already building owners. You can get all the details of what's covered in our program at Everything Coworking dot com slash start."
00:11:01,"Okay. So they, so they are in, they are in place. The U SS p s recognizes that this is a, this is kind of a big deal. They've been, they've been doing some beta testing with, with cmra to see how the new process works, which I'll get into. And there's some improvements that need to be done there."
00:11:21,"The, the U S P S recognizes that this is gonna be a process. And so there, there's also a, a a 30 day, you know, cure period. If your local postmaster ever came in and said, you're not doing this and I'm gonna shut your mail off, which by the way is a risk, they, they, I I think they're being very open-minded."
00:11:37,"They, they get that this is a big process. So in any event, if you Jamie, I could send you a link if you don't have it, of the, of the rules, the final rules that are out there, and there's a bunch of kind of q and a in there too. That's, that's valuable. And it's not a long read,"
00:11:52,"it's a 1520 minute read. So let me know if you want me to follow up on that. You can publish that. So anyway, there was, for a long period of time, there was a gray area as to whether or not your industry even needed to be listed as a C M R A and, and many, many operators did not say,"
00:12:09,"I don't need to go through that. I, there's this, I don't have so many physical offices, so it doesn't really matter. I kind of check the box and that. Do you recall that? Or some, there was some variation on that or uncertainty and people were trying to work the system anyway. There's no more working the system If all flex operators,"
00:12:29,"I mean a quote an office business center, O B C that provides private office facilities for others and receives single point mail delivery from the postal service must become an approved C M R A now, right? So I think there's zero gray area if you're receiving any mail for any third party, whether they're even in a private o only if you only have physical customers,"
00:12:51,"not virtuals, you still need to become a C M R A. And so there's a document you can find with the U SS P s that fill out, you have to have that notarized and you have to submit that to the U S P S locally. And in, you know, some, some, some post offices are more up to speed on this stuff than others."
00:13:10,"They may say, yep, great. Got it. Others may say, I don't even know what that is. Doesn't matter. You, you have to go through the process and get it submitted. Yeah. And this is All about Really quickly, that's not, we're not here to talk about that. But I just have to mention, because this comes up all the time,"
00:13:23,"it may be that you have to ask for a manager, and I know the post office can be very challenging, but I often find that it's the managers who know what the form is. And I have operators who have to like, show up when the manager's gonna be there. They might have to wait for the manager's lunch break to be over. You have to find the right person."
00:13:43,"And that may not be easy. You might ask another operator in your market who, how they got it done. It, it's challenging, but to your, to your point, like you have to do it. And I love your emphasis on, even if you're not managing mail for virtual customers, even if they're physical, Yeah. You have to do it."
00:14:04,"And the risk is, you, you, you're risking mail being delivered to your location. They, they, if, if you don't follow the rules, eventually they would just stop delivering it and, and, and, or they can just hold it back for a period of time until you meet the requirements. So you wanna just be careful and you just have to get it done."
00:14:19,"Okay. So that's the, that's sort of the, the big point. Number one. The other point is, is they've changed the, the, the 1583 document itself, there had been no change in that for quite a long time. Like, you know, well over a decade. And so that has now been updated. So there's a new form,"
00:14:37,"the changes aren't super meaningful, but you need to know that there is a new form that needs to be, that needs to be filled out and notarized and submitted to the U S P S. And is that like retroactive or is it for new customers going forward? Hmm, now we, now we get into the kind of ugly, nasty, difficult,"
00:15:02,"difficult side. So, No, it's, I was just trying to like picture, okay, what are people gonna ask that I forgot to ask Matt? So, Yeah, yeah. Yep. No, and I've got, I've got this coming right up. So, okay, so the form, so all new customers as of July 9th need to be,"
00:15:17,"need to be submitting this form. So as an example, we have, we have, we, we provide a pre-populated form when someone signs up for services on our site, we pre-pop, pre-populate that form and then send it off to the operator for approval. We are now using the new form for that. And so all forms have to be uploaded by the operator."
00:15:40,"So Cplex operator onto a, a database provided by the U S P S. It's the c r d, the customer registration database. And this is a one at a time upload. There is no a p i yet, there, there's no way to avoid a one at a, literally a one at a time. Upload a both the 15 notarized 1583 along with two forms of ID onto the platform."
00:16:12,"And the documents do not need to be notified notarized, okay? If you are on site and you see the person, so one of your staff members can sort of sign the 1583 and, and along with the two IDs and say, yes, I verify this person's ID and then, and upload it. So not everyone, if, if a staff member can verify the person's ID and that,"
00:16:38,"and that sort of stands as, as, okay, it's these, the remote ones really that need to be, be notarized. Okay? I want to interrupt you for a minute with a special offer, if you are an operator that is getting ready to launch or your space is less than a year old and less than 200 members, office r and d is piloting a program called Flex Startup program,"
00:17:04,"which allows you to save 50% on your first year with office r and D Flex to help you grow your Coworking space. As many of you know, I run programs that help operators launch. I run mastermind programs for operators that are in business and a Community Manager program. And we have lots of members that love using r and d office r and d."
00:17:26,"It's kind of an all-in-one platform that has fantastic analytics, meeting room management, lots of integrations, all the things as I like to say. So it's a fan favorite of the Everything Coworking program members. So I'm excited that you get a chance to kind of get started with it at a discounted rate. So 50% off of your first year, you can learn more about the offer and sign up for a demo by going to Everything Coworking dot com slash org d that's Everything Coworking dot com slash org d We'll also throw that link in the show notes."
00:18:09,"So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. Okay. So, so they, and so they all need to be uploaded. So the rub and difficulty is all previous customers, all existing customers who had a 1583 submitted, you have to submit a new one, you have to updated form along with two IDs. Ugh."
00:18:31,"Right? That's ev everyone's groaning about that. I get the point here. You know, we, we do, we, we wish the U US U S P SS had an a p i, we, we've looked at building tools and we still may do that to, to make the process easier for everybody, including ourselves. And they're just not there yet."
00:18:48,"They're trying to, I mean, this is about, you know, I mean things can, people can, there are a lot of bad actors out there who can use these addresses for bad things. And the u and the U S P S is trying to get up to speed on, on, on tools to make that process smoother. But right now the tools are just not that great."
00:19:02,"Okay? So you're gonna have to go back to all of your existing customers, even if they've never filled out a 1583, by the way. So these are physical office customers. Get the 1583 filled out, signed on site, notarized, if not, and then upload along with the two forms of id. And It looks like there's a nine month grace period to make that happen Happen."
00:19:25,"That's exactly right. That's what I was gonna get to. Okay. There's a nine month grace to make that happen. So there's time. So I would just say start, start working on it now and getting your, your ducks in a row to, for a process to, to get that done. The, the s p s is supposed to,"
00:19:46,"or they have to reach out to you and say, this is happening. So it's sort of, that's sort of when the clock starts ticking of, oh by the way, this has happened and you need to get things moving. So you wanna be in the lookout for that notice. I would say if it doesn't happen by, you know, September,"
00:19:58,"I would maybe follow up proactively. Maybe it just got lost for some reason. You just don't wanna be surprised and have your mail shut down or, and, and then have a major scramble where you're running around getting 1580 threes filled out and trying to upload them. Yeah, it's a, you know, it's just a process that's gonna be gonna be a challenge,"
00:20:16,"but it's totally doable. It's just gonna be a challenge. The other part that is also challenging, while we're still on the topic of good news here, is up updating IDs that have expired. So the USPS is, is saying that they will alert when, or alert you when an ID has expired. Let's say someone's driver's license expires. But you're gonna wanna be keeping track of those IDs and knowing when they're gonna,"
00:20:44,"when they're expiring. I want to interrupt you for a minute. With a special offer, if you are an operator that is getting ready to launch or your space is less than a year old and less than 200 members, office r and d is piloting a program called Flex Startup program, which allows you to save 50% on your first year with office r and D Flex to help you grow your Coworking space."
00:21:16,"As many of you know, I run programs that help operators launch. I run mastermind programs for operators that are in business and a Community Manager program. And we have lots of members that love using r and d office r and d. It's kind of an all-in-one platform that has fantastic analytics, meeting room management, lots of integrations, all the things as I like to say."
00:21:42,"So it's a fan favorite of the Everything Coworking program members. So I'm excited that you get a chance to kind of get started with it at a discounted rate. So 50% off of your first year, you can learn more about the offer and sign up for a demo by going to Everything Coworking dot com slash o d, that's Everything Coworking dot com slash org."
00:22:11,"We'll also throw that link in the show notes. So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. So having there, there isn't a database or any software that I'm familiar with yet. And, and maybe that's something that's built in some of the, some of the CRMs that are out there, but you wanna, you wanna make sure you're someone's driver's license expires,"
00:22:31,"you wanna get it, get the new one and get that uploaded onto that c r D system for the U S P S. Okay. So if I get a new member, I need to have some system, it's a spreadsheet, it's a c r m, it's something where there's a field that has driver's license expiry and I need to look at that every month,"
00:22:47,"look ahead and get updated documents Again. Yep. However you wanna track. Right. And just, just when, when, when you receive the document initially, I, I think you wanna have some internal system, simple system that you're, you're doing some of the tracking here because I would not rely on to date on the U S P S systems to alert."
00:23:05,"That's what I'm thinking, right? Yeah. It doesn't have to be fancy, right? It's, you know, just an Excel sheet or something. Exactly. You look up monthly, you just know. And we can't, I mean, Yeah, I mean a lot of folks have an have spreadsheet even just to track like, is this a, is this one of our lead,"
00:23:20,"you know, our mailbox customers, is it an Anytime customer, et cetera. So even just putting it in there, so if it is an Anytime customer, will you track the X expire and will there be a notification or is that not in the system? Yeah, It's our, our, our, we haven't built that out yet, but that our plan is to build that out,"
00:23:38,"right? To make this, we, we wanna make this as easy as possible. 'cause of course we're, you know, this is a kinda a shared customer, if you will, right? Yeah. And so we wanna, and we're a software company, right? So we wanna have these, you know, tools available to make the process as simple as possible."
00:23:52,"Got it. And then, okay. See Yeah, go ahead. Yes. So keep going and then I'll ask my follow-up questions. Yep. And then also the other, the other piece that has is new is providing a forwarding address that's been given by the, the renter or the mailbox provider. So it's, you know, there's this rule that's kind of a pain,"
00:24:13,"right? That when a, when a mailbox closes or when a, you know, a address closes, if you will, that you have to hold the mail for six months. Is that, I hope everyone knows that, right? So you need to collect the mail and hold it for six months, and then if that recipient or the former customer wants it forwarded to them,"
00:24:32,"they of course, to pay for that to do it, you're under no obligation to send it for free. But that forwarding address needs to be captured by the U S P S. They, they need to know where things are being sent is really the, the bottom line. Right. So that, is that a field in their system? Like,"
00:24:52,"is that It's, it's a field. It's, it's a field in the 1583. Oh, on the 1583. Okay, got it. It's a field in the 1583. Yeah. And so what our, our process is, if someone we're gonna, we're not gonna make it a requirement, but, but we're gonna have the field available and recommend that they,"
00:25:08,"they, they input a forwarding address. A lot of folks don't wanna, I mean, they're having a virtual address. 'cause they don't want, they don't, they, they just wanna mail on their phone. Well, so that's a great point. So then, okay, but what happens if they cancel and the operator doesn't have a forwarding address? You have to,"
00:25:24,"you have to upload it. If the forwarding, if mail forwarding is requested, you're gonna have to upload that address into the C R D platform and there'll be a field for that. So if they don't require forwarding, then you don't, you're not required to fill out that field. Yeah, I mean, I'd say that's my understanding, right? Yeah."
00:25:45,"So that's a little, little, little bit of a, you know, respond to the judge and not sure. But if, if there's no, if they're not requesting mail to be forwarded anywhere, then why would you need to have a forwarding address? You don't know what it's, right. Yeah. Yeah. And I Right to your point like that,"
00:25:59,"yeah. That may be one of the reasons people Yeah. Yeah. They want your address not to share their address. So the, okay, if, if, just to clarify that rule, if someone has an address with a Coworking space, they cancel the service, the Coworking space operator has to hold the mail for six months. Yes. No forwarding any,"
00:26:22,"you know, no action is requested. What do they do with the mail at the end of six months? Hmm, that's a good question. I think you can return to sender. Yeah. Get it back to the post office. Yeah. You know, I mean, you could even dispose of it. I mean, nothing's gonna, I don't think anything's gonna come back to haunt you in that case."
00:26:37,"Yeah. But you've done, you know, We shouldn't be returning to sender along the, throughout the six months. You're supposed to hold and wait. Yeah, Okay. You're supposed to hold and wait. Yeah. And then if the customer is not responding to, you know, can I have an address? Would you like to forward this is the fee,"
00:26:54,"then return to sender, shred, whatever. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's what I, you may wanna ask your, you know, post office representative, but yeah, I think at that point I would not, I would not worry about it. Okay. Got it. And there, there are some, I, I know there are some agreements that folks have put together trying to get out of that six month period."
00:27:18,"Yep. I don't know. I I, I, I just don't think it's worth trying to be, you know, tricky or fancy here. Right. It's like, follow the rules. It's such an integral part of the business offering. Yep. That I, I just don't think you wanna play around with it too much. Just operationalize it. It's not,"
00:27:32,"not that much overhead. I know it's not sexy, but it, it's, managing mail is, it's not that hard. It doesn't take that much time. There isn't that much mail. And it's a great differentiator for, for all the Coworking spaces and can be, can be a big problem if it's not managed well. 'cause that's where a bad review comes in."
00:27:52,"Something would be very upset if something doesn't, isn't, isn't run properly there. A hundred percent right? Yeah. Mail gets lost, mails get, yes. Yep. Yeah. It's only down, there's only downside, right? Yeah. There's only a downside. Yeah, yeah, I know. But we, although we yes, to remove the intimidation factor,"
00:28:08,"that doesn't happen very often. The upside is far greater. And I think what you're saying is like, just figure out the process. Make sure you have it all documented. Because usually it's the community management team that's handling the mail, make sure they're well-trained, but the revenue upside, I mean, it's the revenue upside. And it's just like, it's a service that a lot of people need."
00:28:28,"And it can be a, it can be a lead gen for your space. It can be you guys, I don't know if you're still running ads, you're running ads that I would see on Instagram for, you know, like business identity. And I'm like, that's a, I love that term, like business identity. Yeah. I might be a freelancer,"
00:28:42,"I might be whoever I am, I may. And, and the, I need a way to show up as a business. And one of those ways is to not have my house and, and all the data, you know, that comes up if somebody googles my home address on invoices, on, you know, government documents, whatever it is."
00:28:59,"So it's, it's a great service. Yeah. And, and a great can be a great revenue generator for our business. Yeah. I I, I appreciate that. And, and, and it's true. I mean, we are, we are signing up thousands of customers a month. Okay. You know, I, I mean, it, it is a real service."
00:29:15,"No, I love that You say that because I still have a lot of people who are like, I don't understand who needs this. No, no, no, no. I mean, and it's like everyone, like, people kind of know about it now, right? Like if you're, if they're starting a business, it's like, oh yeah,"
00:29:28,"this is one of the things I need. I need to get one of those virtual addresses. Now. Now I anecdotally, when people ask me what I do, not long ago, people are like, oh, I don't get it now. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard of, I've heard of that. I, yeah,"
00:29:39,"maybe I should get that for my, my personal as well. It seems like it would make sense. So that's sort of the next thing we're, we're hoping and expecting will come. But no, there's a big revenue stream here. Thousands of dollars, you know, a monthly of operators, many operators in the five figures a month. It's, you know."
00:29:57,"Yeah. It's, it's, it's real. And it's, and it adds value to the customer. So Yeah. I love it. I even, I'm working with a group in Denver. They're developers and they're creating a new kind of multipurpose development, but it has a Coworking space and we are going through their ideal customer avatar. And, you know,"
00:30:15,"one of their user segments is like people who live in Denver because they wanna be able to like, live in the mountains during the winter and then come back. Not like a full digital nomad sort of profile, but I wanna have some flexibility. And so I need a consistent address place to get packages. So we're thinking about like, you know, they're have enough storage and,"
00:30:37,"but they're really thinking about that as like, okay, what's the package for them? What does that look like? Because it, it's so valid and, and relevant these days. Not, you know, not in every market, but you know, that that's one kind of fun example. I I I, it's off topic and we could maybe another podcast another day,"
00:30:55,"but I think this like, flexible, flexible lifestyle is huge. Right? And it's not like I wanna go live in Portugal. Yeah. It's, yeah, I wanna go. I mean, we're talking about summer, you know, I wanna wait on, on a trip with my family for a few weeks and I was able to manage my business remotely."
00:31:11,"And I'm not gonna move there anytime soon, but I just wanna have the flexibility to do what I wanna do when I wanna do it. And that's, that's very much what's happening. You know? I, I think culturally so, yeah. But, and people still, lots of opportunity have physical stuff that shows up. So a lot of stuff is online and you pay your bills online and you know,"
00:31:30,"some of those things, but there's still stuff that's very physical and you need it a place for it to go when you're not there. You have to have it. Yep. And mail, by the way, mail is physical mail is not going away any at anytime. So that like, doesn't even, you know, enter into our near, near term like few years out profile of risk."
00:31:50,"Like we don't even really think about that. You know, it's just how do, how do we add more value around it? Yep. A hundred percent. So, so, so getting back to this process, yes. It's a, it's a, a necessary evil. I think I, I know the USS guys has very good intentions here. It will,"
00:32:08,"the process will improve. I think we will see better tools in the coming years around this. Overall, I think it's very valuable to have good ID verification for all kinds of reasons, you know, societal as well as running, running the business. And, and I would just urge everyone to look at the, the documentation again. It's a, it's a pretty quick read."
00:32:29,"It, it is a critical part of your business and it's just a, a, a few pieces. You just need to, you know, operationalize. And I think it'll be, you know, be just fine. Yeah. It's worth noting. This is the U S P S, so it doesn't apply to Canada or we have a lot of Canadian listeners."
00:32:46,"So you have your own, you know, requirements for, for managing mail. This is only a US policy change. So the nine months to, to kind of get full, you know, fully compliant. Is that from the July 9th date? Do you know? Yeah, good question. I, you know, I I I talking to some industry insiders and I don't know that the clock has started ticking on that yet,"
00:33:10,"but it's, yeah. If, if it hasn't started officially Yeah. Don't quote me on that. Right. It's, it's going too soon. Right. It's like you gotta get on it, you know? Yeah. They, the U S P SS gets that this is, you know, this is a big cumbersome project and they're not looking to harm anybody here."
00:33:28,"They just wanna get it right and get it going as soon as possible. So I would just say start getting it going as soon as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Put a system in place, put a goal in place with your team. Get somebody turned over. Yeah. Okay. So, and it's just required. 'cause I'm thinking there will be operators who are like,"
00:33:44,"oh, we have people who never get mail. Are they gonna cancel when we reach out? 'cause now we need their ID and it's a pain. So are they just gonna say, forget it, I'm just gonna cancel. There could be some of that that happens, but you gotta do it anyway. Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to develop your own marketing strategy around that."
00:34:02,"Yeah. Right. It's, you decide how you want to, how you want to go after that frame It. Yeah. I would just that that's up to the indi individual. Yeah. I, I would not, I I, I would though from an operator perspective, I would get yourself signed up right away with the U S P S, though I would not,"
00:34:18,"I would not mess around with that. 'cause you, you know, that's doable. And I would just get, get going on that. Get your own 1583. It's a 1583 A Yep. Is the form and that get that filled out and, and, and that will have to be notarized and drop that off If you are not already, if you haven't already done that process."
00:34:38,"Or is it new? We don't have to go back the 1583 A. Yeah, I don't think you have to. I don't think, I don't think you have to go back. I can I take that as a follow up. I'm not positive on that actually. Yeah, you're, yeah. I see it says minor changes have been made to the 1583 See the updated 15."
00:34:55,"Yeah. Okay. Yes. Let's take that as a follow up. I need to read through this as well. Yeah. Sorry, I don't, I don't know that one for sure. Yeah. Are they, are any other sort of FAQs we should, should cover? I don't think so. Let me just go through my notes. I talked about expired docs,"
00:35:13,"folding addresses. Yeah. Oh, I mean, if you're not already doing this, this has been in place a long time, but you still have to send a quarterly update to the U S P S for all your current, current mailboxes or I guess virtual customers or C M R A customers and those that have been removed and added. So it's,"
00:35:36,"it's sort of, this is your constant list then. New ads and removals. Yeah. Okay. So if you're not doing that, you wanna do that as well. 'cause we get every, every now and then, I mean, so maybe once a month we will get a reach out. Oh the, the post office just showed up and they said,"
00:35:48,"Hey, I need, I want to see all your, all your 1580 threes and I want see all this. And, and, and they threatened to stop mail and it can be problematic. Yep. So does that have to be submitted or kept on file Submitted, Like taken to the post office physically? Yep. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So in our platform,"
00:36:11,"for example, you just press a button and it, it provides the, it, it provides report. It, It provides the print. You need to just take it with you. Yep. Okay. Great. Yep. Exactly. That's a good reminder. Yeah, there's some good reminders in, in process here in looking through the updates. Okay."
00:36:26,"Well I think we'll send, so if, I'm sure you're addressing these updates in your operator update newsletter, so we'll, we'll, We certainly are. Yep, yep. Yep. If you, if you're Not subscribed, it's a great newsletter. Thank you. It is. I, I read it. I'm like, oh, actually it's pretty interesting."
00:36:47,"So, so sorry, just kind of kidding there. So I'm also Jamie I'll also, we put some documentation together as well and we'll talk about that offline then I think Will, will help you answer some things. 'cause this is a big, you know, it's a critical part of our business. Yeah. So yeah, I'm happy to provide whatever I can."
00:37:04,"And if, and if people wanna reach out to me directly for questions, I'm available as well. Perfect. Yeah. Happy to pass questions along. If you're in any Anytime customer already, you could reach out to their team and we'll include the relevant links to the new forms and the read on the updates in the show notes as well. And the show notes."
00:37:22,"Just a reminder, if you're on, especially on an iPhone, you can just click on those links right in the episode details. So really easy to access. Awesome. Okay. Well, yep. It's a little bit of work, but there's a lot of upside and gotta do it. So just make a process. Yeah. Do your next weekly meeting with your team."
00:37:40,"Just put it on the agenda and figure out how you're gonna do it and let your team do it. And Matt, thank you for keeping us up to speed. Yeah. I'm gonna share this with my Community, Manager University group. That's what we have a slack group and somebody started to ask questions. Oh, cool. And I was like, I gotta be on top of this."
00:37:57,"I gotta call Matt. So thank you for taking the time To do this. Oh good. Thanks a lot again. Yeah. Always good to see you Jamie. And we'll talk soon. See you at the G W A event. Yep. We Have to put in a plug. Matt is on the G W A Board, the Global Workspace Association,"
00:38:11,"and that is, I think the third week in September. I need to book my flights and hotels and all that good stuff. So yeah, I can't wait. I'll see there. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Yeah. Thanks Matt. All right. Cool. Alright. Kay. Bye. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard,"
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