345. Why People Buy Virtual Mailboxes at Coworking Spaces (And Why You Should be Selling Them)

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345. Why People Buy Virtual Mailboxes at Coworking Spaces (And Why You Should be Selling Them)

00:00:00,"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 a thought provoking operator,"

00:00:26,"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. Welcome to the Everything Coworking Podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Thank you for being with me today. Okay, so it's been a couple of weeks since I have posted an episode."

00:00:57,"We have been super busy. So it is mail month, we're extending mail month into May, but we're calling it the May Mail Moneymaker Challenge because that is a great alliteration. So we are our, we publish our podcast every week, mostly because we wanna help you operate better businesses, we wanna keep you up to speed on what's going on in the industry."

00:01:26,"But you know what? Mostly I want you to have a profitable business. You may have gotten into this business because you're really passionate about community, delivering something unique to your community, creating community, building community, having an impact, all those things. You can't do that if you're not profitable or if you don't have a comfortable enough margin to feed your family,"

00:01:50,"pay for gymnastics, pay for soccer club, all the things. So we're gonna be focusing a bit more heavily on content and programs that can help you generate revenue. So the easiest one to start with is virtual mailboxes. So we're gonna do a series to help introduce you to why people buy virtual mailboxes, how they work, how much money you can make on them,"

00:02:20,"who is having a lot of success with this as a revenue stream. And more so if you are interested, we're gonna tell you about the program that we're running over the next couple of months to help you get up and running and making money on virtual mailboxes. So let me dive in. First I'm gonna mention if your Community Manager is in our Community Manager program,"

00:02:45,"it is mail month for them too. So we already had our live training for the month and so a couple things happening there. We really focused our live training on what the group was interested in talking about, and we kinda hit a range of topics in mail. We have also just updated our mail training and so they have access on how to launch a mail program."

00:03:08,"And we keep that group really up to date on the CMRA regulations and the changes that are happening there. And of course, they can ask any questions and we answer them right away. So your Community Manager can get a lot of support in that group and you can join anytime. That being said, what I acknowledge about the Community Manager group is that many of them don't have the authority to make some of the changes that we recommend that are more strategic."

00:03:38,"Like they don't have the authority to start a mail program if you don't have one yet. They don't have the authority to change your website. They don't have the authority to change your, your packages and your pricing. So we wanna get you the owners involved in those decisions. So that's what the program is gonna be about, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute."

00:03:56,"Okay, so I think one thing that folks, so there's probably two groups of you listening. Some of you already have a male program and some of you have not started one because you don't believe in it, you don't know how to get started, it feels overwhelming. What's A-C-M-R-A? What's a 1583 form? All those things and some of you. So,"

00:04:19,"so the getting started group is what this is really gonna be more focused on. And the folks who have a program, I can tell you that I have been auditing websites because when I do training, I always look for real life examples for best practices. And every single website that I hit had room for improvement that I guarantee you would give you a higher conversion rate."

00:04:44,"I also know that many of you are not going all in on mail because it feels distracting. Maybe your team doesn't like it because it takes time to process. You're struggling with how to keep your team, you know, focused on on your, you other, your pipeline sales funnel, you know, making sure you fill the space, et cetera. I totally get that."

00:05:07,"We're gonna address that. So, so I actually might talk for those of you who are gonna tune out, 'cause you already have a mail program and may totally understand how it works, lemme tell you about the program we're running and then I'm gonna dive into why mail, why people buy it and why it can be important for your business. Even if you're in a small market."

00:05:28,"By the way, you would be very surprised, we have a startup school student who's been trying to figure out how to start a mail program and she's actually, you know, helps reinforce some of the things that I know folks get confused about. It can be very overwhelming to figure out, you know, what forms do I need? How do I assign mailbox numbers?"

00:05:46,"How is this gonna work? She's in a pretty small market and she got a giant lead of three KA month already for mail, and all she needs to do is get it set up and it came from a referral partner. So this is an opportunity even if you're in a smaller market and it's always worth testing. So on the next episode, I'm gonna do a walkthrough of what's possible in terms of revenue and profit for mail."

00:06:13,"And I'm going to assume that you're gonna hire external staff, which we're gonna help with in our challenge once you get to a certain volume of mail and your team is done processing mail. So, okay, here we go. Let me tell you about the challenge really quickly. So you have to enroll by May 12th. Let me check and make sure that's the right date."

00:06:36,"'cause I think we said May 15th and that is not gonna work. Yeah. Okay. So we're gonna say May 12th, which which is a Sunday. 'cause we need to enroll you on Monday 'cause everything's gonna really kick off on Wednesday the 15th. So you have a little bit of time to decide, but we need you to decide in like the next week."

00:06:53,"So this is a challenge and it's for owners. You can send a gm, but it has to be somebody with authority to make decisions about what you're selling, pricing, changing your website, and signing up with referral partners. So this is to make you money. It's not informational. So you can't send a team member who can't get these things done."

00:07:14,"So this program is really for the folks who you've had this on your list or through this series, you come to believe, okay, yeah, I need to get a mail program up and running and you wanna make it happen in the next 60 or so days. So we're gonna run a series of quarterly revenue building programs for owners, and we're starting with mail."

00:07:38,"And again, we gave it a fun name. It's called the May Mail Money Maker Challenge. There will be prizes, and we're gonna have to dos for you to do every single week, although we're gonna give you plenty of time to get through this because I know there will be resistance to those of you who are busy who don't have time to do something every single week."

00:07:59,"So it's not get, it's gonna be totally doable, but you're gonna get it done by the end of June. So we're gonna get your mail program up and running and we're gonna spoon feed you every single thing that we can. We're gonna do audits of your sales funnel for your mail. We're gonna look at your pricing, we're gonna make sure the workflow makes sense because as I mentioned,"

00:08:21,"even for those of you who already have a program, as I look through examples on websites, even multi-site operators have some pretty significant room for improvement in their workflow. So we're gonna do audits for you. So what does this look like? We're sharing this info on our email list. So I'll put a link for you to sign up in our, on our email list in the show notes."

00:08:45,"So you can pull that up right here on your phone, just kind of expand the episode, or you can go to our website and grab the show notes. Okay, so we're looking to make you money and we're gonna talk about how much money you can make in the next episode of this. So stay tuned. Okay? So we're gonna help you go through step by step."

00:09:06,"If you aren't A-C-M-R-A yet, a commercial mail receiving agency, we're gonna help you get through that. We're gonna help you define or refine what you're selling, and I guarantee you, you have not considered the possibilities of the packages that you could sell so that you're not only selling basic mail services. So we're gonna help make sure you have the right product for you."

00:09:30,"We're gonna make some recommendations, you can pick whatever you want, but we're always gonna provide a recommendation so that you can take it and run with it. If you want to do that as your first iteration and make this as easy as possible, we're gonna help you set or update your pricing. Again, I think your mind would be pretty blown. We have operators who are selling virtual packages for 3 29 a month."

00:09:55,"That's well above what most of you are selling a full-time Coworking membership for, right? That's pretty incredible. And guess what? A mailing address is really freaking sticky. So it's hard to change a mailing address. So the LTV of male customers, high-end male customers, I'm not talking about 9 99 a month here. High-end male customers is long. So this could have a real impact on your business."

00:10:21,"And so if you have not considered the possibilities and we're gonna talk about what those packages, you know, might look like, then this is for you. So just imagine what you might accomplish if you went from charging, you know, $29 a month and offering packages that are up to 3 29 a month. We have folks in our Community Manager program who are selling these packages."

00:10:44,"So we covered that on our last call. We are going to help you sell more memberships. 99%, as I have mentioned of the websites that I audit are underearning on your mail services because you're not optimizing organic sales channels or you're not optimizing referral partners. So we're gonna help you understand both of those. And we're gonna make recommendations specific to your website."

00:11:11,"So this is a pretty high touch program. We're gonna make sure your sales funnel is optimized. It's really hard to read the label from inside the bottle, right? I have that problem. I work with coaches who you know will, I'll have incredible, like, you know, epiphanies sometimes when they see something that's right in front of me that I just wasn't seeing."

00:11:31,"It's very hard. And so you might say, my mail workflow's totally fine and then I look at it and can find six things that you know could increase your conversion pretty quickly. So we're gonna do that. We're gonna show up with fresh eyes and audit your sales funnel from top to bottom and give you a list of what you can update. And then we'll help you simplify and document your SOPs so that your team can operate this."

00:11:54,"Or you can hire a very part-time person to manage your mail. So I totally get it. Some of you're like, look, this is not a good use of time for my team. I want them selling offices, especially if you're newer and you have a space to fill up, then you don't want them to use their time for that. So we're gonna show you,"

00:12:13,"we're gonna give you templates for outsourcing this, and we're gonna walk you through the process of how to hire someone to manage what that looks like in terms of how you should train them, you and what you should have them sign in terms of NDAs, et cetera, so that you feel comfortable outsizing outsourcing this role. We're gonna have coaching calls so that you can get on and ask your questions."

00:12:38,"Boom, boom. This is not, you know, meant to be long and drawn out. This should not be difficult to get set up. We're gonna take you through the process in order to do that. The only reason you haven't set it up is because there's some things getting in your way or you have it set up, but you kind of made it up as you went along and you're not fully optimized."

00:12:56,"So we're gonna help you do that. We're gonna have a Slack channel for everybody in the program. You got a question, we're gonna answer it or make recommendations for you. So this is 3 75 a month and it's for a three month duration. So you gotta commit to the three months. It's not just a one month thing because it's a quarterly challenge that we're running,"

00:13:16,"although we're gonna do this first one a little bit more quickly and make really good use of your time because we started a little bit late in the quarter and we can do it. And then next quarter in Q4, we're gonna have another revenue challenge for you. So my goal is every quarter we're gonna work on something that drives revenue for you so you don't have to commit to for the rest of your life,"

00:13:36,"but you do have to commit to the first challenge. So we'll give you the link to join in the show notes. You gonna grab it in the show notes. I don't have a short link for you. I need to do that. Okay, here we go. Let's talk about why. What is a virtual mailbox? Who uses one and what pain point are you solving?"

00:14:01,"Are you ready? Okay, other terms that are used to talk about virtual mailbox services, you might call it something different. Virtual business address. Virtual office address, mail forwarding virtual mailing address, an LLC address, temporary address, mail scanning, mailbox rental, a physical address, a permanent address, a business address, an alternate address. And that is courtesy of anytime Mailbox and their website."

00:14:29,"So they are a referral partner and we will explain what they do in the, as part of the program. We will also have folks, we're gonna do some special calls that our community managers and owners will get invited to for q and A on CMRA updates and also understanding referral partners. Okay, what are some business reasons that people use virtual addresses? Professionalism,"

00:14:56,"privacy, compliance and registration. Receiving mail, securely local, having a local presence and marketing. Okay, let's talk about privacy as an example. Okay, so if you are a business owner, you own a Coworking space, so you have this all built in, but guess what, if you don't own a Coworking space and you send out a newsletter to your customers,"

00:15:19,"for example, or any communication through MailChimp or Active Campaign, guess what? You have to put in a an address and it has to be, you have, it's required. You cannot send the email without an address. So if you, and guess where that address appears at the bottom of the email to every single recipient. So if you put in your home address,"

00:15:41,"guess what? Everybody sees your home address and guess what? They can Google it and see how much you paid for your house. So, or where you live. I mean, nobody wants that, right? You don't want that as a business owner. And so if you're a business owner without a lease, you have no way to avoid using your home address unless you have a virtual mailbox and you have an address that you can use."

00:16:06,"So privacy is a big one. And even professionalism, right? You don't wanna be sending out a newsletter that has a home address on it and it's clear it's a home address that's kind of awkward. Compliance and registration. There are lots of states that require you to have a business address in order to register your business, either locally or statewide. So in order to get an LLC and I,"

00:16:32,"I don't have the number in front of me, but the number of new businesses formed, which means LLCs formed or filed is incredible every single year. And so again, it's a requirement in a lot of states or at the local level that you have an actual business address in order to get that registered. So I'm sneaking ahead a little bit, but one of the objections that folks tend to have about opening a male program is they think they're just gonna be inundated by physical mail that their team has to manage."

00:17:05,"And when you get to a certain volume, yes. So William Edmondson from I Postal, who's gonna join us for some of these calls, his rule of thumb is that for every 30 customer, or sorry, every a hundred customers, your team's gonna spend about 30 minutes a day on mail. So it takes a while and a lot of revenue for this to become a real challenge for your team."

00:17:29,"Typically, you may have some atypical customers and William also points out that it's probably actually your own members who take up your time with mail service, not the folks who are not local, right? If I just need you the an address to register my LLC, you're not gonna get any mail from me except my LLC documents. So I, you're gonna get mail a couple times a year."

00:17:54,"The volume is really, really low. The 80 20 rule absolutely applies here. 80% of your mail customers will get little to no mail, they just need to have the address and some of them will get more. We had a virtual customer who for whatever reason, didn't wanna get packages at home, which we'll get into in a second, and I'm kind of jumping ahead here,"

00:18:18,"but he would send, he had a sneaker thing, kinda like geo, I guess Geo like has a problem with the Khan outlet. And he would send his sneaker boxes to the office and he'd show up and you know, he'd always email and make sure he, they were there and he could come by and get them. So there will be people who actually get stuff delivered to the office that you actually have to store,"

00:18:40,"but it's much lower volume than you think it will be. And the local presence and marketing is a very big deal. And we have very detailed training in our Community Manager program. And as a part of this program that walks through, how do you let your customers legally use your Google business address? There's a lot of requirements around that and a lot of things we want you to know in order to determine the risk and what makes sense for you."

00:19:10,"I should also mention that all this content that we, any training that we deliver as part of the, this program will be available as a private podcast. So you don't have to sit and watch a video. You can absolutely, it'll be available in both formats, but you will have access to a private podcast so that you can listen on the go and get what you need and then take action."

00:19:31,"And the private podcast will show up right on your phone, just like this podcast does. It's miraculous. We do it for all of our paid programs. Okay, so who uses virtual mailboxes for business purposes? Small business owners, remote workers, solo entrepreneurs, consultancies, I mean, you name it, lots of people have the reasons we talked about."

00:19:54,"Okay? Who uses a virtual mailbox for personal reasons? People who are looking for deliverability, they just want to go paperless. They want unneeded mail to get shredded. They just don't want this stuff coming to their house. They wanna get packages sent somewhere that's not their home address. They want security when they're traveling. Think about how folks who don't have kids in school travel a lot more today,"

00:20:23,"right? Remote employees can work from wherever they want. I spend a lot of time not at home these days because I can, and lots of folks, if the whole family is gone or you know you're gone, but your roommates are gone, who knows? You don't wanna have the mail show up while you're gone and you can forward the, or you can put a hold on your mail,"

00:20:45,"but then you're not actually getting mail while you're gone. And there may be things that you need to be able to receive. So if you have a virtual mailbox, they can hold it for you and you should charge them for that. You should charge holding storage fees, which we'll get into in the program. So who are these folks who use virtual mailboxes for personal reasons?"

00:21:06,"Digital nomads. Again, families that just don't want their home address out and about. College students, fresh graduates, military personnel, frequent travelers, hashtag van life. Anybody who's moving around who doesn't have like college students is a great example, right? They have a, an address that probably changes every year, which can be a real pain. So if they have a virtual mailbox,"

00:21:35,"then they're probably not getting packages, but any mail that they need to be received can go to one specific place. Or they might get something locally, wherever they're going to school. And even if they move every year because they're getting, you know, new housing, renting a new apartment, whatever, they have a consistent address. So lots of reasons,"

00:21:54,"both personal and professional why people are getting addresses. So this is happening and the referral partners are running ads. So they're running ads to speak directly to these needs and these problems that need to be solved for these customers. So that is happening, the demand is out there and the referral partners are connecting the dots for folks who need virtual addresses. So those referral partners though,"

00:22:30,"and even folks who are local. Local. So again, I, I should be super clear, virtual customers might live nearby and they might also not live nearby. So there's lots of reasons why someone locally might need a professional business address and might show up to pick up mail or might live locally, but still never actually get mail and never come to your space."

00:22:54,"Or they might come to your space if you sell them a bundled package that includes meeting room hours and that kind of thing, which we'll get into in the program. Or they might live in another state and you might never see them, or you might only see them when they come in town for business. So there's just a lot of different reasons why someone might need a local address and they might live nearby or they might not."

00:23:17,"So, okay, hopefully this is helpful in terms of sort of setting the stage around why the heck people use virtual mailboxes. And if you still maybe don't believe that this is like a real thing that's actually happening for Coworking spaces. We are going to, in the, either the next or the next two episodes, share how I did this session that we recorded some time ago with several operators who are doing extremely well with their mail programs and they talk through some of the things that they do to optimize and the success that they're having."

00:23:54,"And I think it's gonna be really motivating for you as a way to add revenue to your business. But we're also gonna talk about how much revenue you can add, and I'm gonna walk through a little mini financial scenario so that you can give it some thought and see if it makes sense to add that revenue to your business. So we'll see you in the next episode."

00:24:17,"Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week."

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Jamie RussoComment