347. 3 Coworking Space Owners Share the Behind the Scenes on Their Virtual Mailbox Businesses
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TRANSCRIPTION
347. 3 Coworking Space Owners Share the Behind the Scenes on Their Virtual Mailbox Businesses
00:00:00,"So we've been here 10 years and you know, of course it started at zero, as you'd expect in the first few years. It was a small percentage of our income, but now I just look back over the last three months and it mail is 26% of our revenue for the last few months. Wow. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how tos in Coworking."
00:00:28,"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, 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."
00:01:06,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. We have a special episode for you today. We are airing some snippets of a recording from a how I did this session that we did a couple of years ago now, but it was a fantastic session and it's centered around virtual mailboxes and other virtual services. And may is mail month."
00:01:34,"And so I thought it was the perfect time to pull this out. We ran it live and then the recording has only been available to our, some of our program members. And so we wanted to pull this out of the archives because it's a great illustration of how virtual mailbox services and other virtual services have impacted the businesses of operators in different parts of the US with different types of offerings and different ways they approach this business."
00:02:07,"I think you're really gonna enjoy the diversity of how they handle this business and a little behind the scenes of how they make it all work. So we have three operators who share their stories. So we will jump into that in a minute. If they inspire you and you start thinking about wanting to start or grow your own virtual mailbox service. We are starting a mailbox challenge."
00:02:36,"It is actually our quarterly revenue generating project for the Everything Coworking Club. This is brand new. We've been running different programs and we're really focused on helping you generate revenue in your business. So the first project we're diving into, because it does not matter what size space you have and it's not dependent on being able to change or update your physical space, you,"
00:03:04,"it doesn't, doesn't matter where you are or what you're up to in terms of physical space, you can add virtual services to your business or you can put more focus around them and update your offerings to generate more revenue. So here's how this will work. We're gonna pursue quarterly revenue generating projects in the Everything Coworking Club, which is for operators. We've had a bunch of questions about this."
00:03:31,"You can send a gm, but because we're talking, we're focused on generating revenue. So you're going to tell me what your revenue is from virtual services today and when the challenge is over, we're gonna hear what it is. Again, we're really focused on results here. And so we need you to send folks that have the authority to make changes, change your pricing,"
00:03:53,"change your offering, change your bundles, update your website. We're gonna review funnels, we're gonna look at packages, we're gonna offer best practices. So we're very serious about taking action and helping you grow your virtual office services. And so we need you to send somebody who has the ability to make those changes. And if you commit to it, the whole point is a focused just a,"
00:04:19,"a couple of the first one's gonna be a little shorter than a quarter 'cause we're starting mid-quarter. But you're, you're going to make progress and you're gonna grow your revenue during this time. So the ROI will be, should be a no-brainer. So we're gonna help you define your offer. We're gonna help you set or update your pricing. We're gonna help you sell more virtual memberships."
00:04:42,"We're gonna make sure your sales funnel is optimized to reduce leakage. We'll do reviews. It can be really, I keep saying this, but it's really hard to read the label from the inside of the bottle. Every time I look at someone's website and look at their offerings, I see things that they could optimize that probably they don't see or don't have time to focus on."
00:05:01,"I know that my business is the same. It's always a miracle when I get some fresh eyes on something. So we'll help you audit your sales funnel from top to bottom for virtual mailboxes and get you an easy to execute optimization list. And we'll help you simplify and document your processes to minimize the drain on your team. And you'll hear some suggestions around that on today's episode."
00:05:26,"So we'll do that through weekly coaching calls. All of those will be recorded if you can't make it live, but it'll be great if you can come live daily Slack channel and then submissions and reviews of pricing packages, offers your sales funnel, we'll test your whole workflow, et cetera. So it's super involved and just also, but also designed to be really efficient because we know you own a business or you're managing a business and you get stuff to do and you wanna make an impact on the business but without a lot of time."
00:05:59,"So that is how this is designed. So if you're interested, the link to get all the details and register is in the show notes link. You can grab it there and of course if you're on your our email list, then you will be getting the updates. We'll also include a link so that you can make sure you're on our email list in the show notes."
00:06:22,"So check out all the details. Don't hesitate to send us a quick email if you have any questions at all. Okay. Without further ado, here is our deep dive into the virtual service offerings of three Coworking space owners. So Wes is the president of intelligent offices in downtown Boston. And as you can imagine, downtown Boston had a challenging time during Covid and Wes was in our Flight Group program and literally I think poor Wes talked about virtual program on every call because it's pretty sophisticated and he's,"
00:07:04,"you know, it's, it's pretty advanced and he's been doing this for a while. So everybody wanted to know all of his secret. So he might not tell us all of his secrets, but he's gonna share what his program looks like and it, it was significant enough that it helped him get through covid, which I think is just a really important perspective for folks to be thinking about."
00:07:24,"I think for some reason the sort of virtual digital offerings for Coworking are mysterious. So I think it's really helpful how people are are doing it. And then Laura, Laura, I know you probably can't give us a, a tour of your gorgeous mail storage space, but Laura just decided to go all in when they opened business e Suites on their mail program and she really looks at it as an opportunity to meet local folks that aren't ready for full-time offices,"
00:07:56,"but that can be a part of their ecosystem and obviously it's a revenue generator. So she treats them really like members and she'll talk about their program. And then Ashley's in Ocala and there are two markets now I think working on a third location in Florida. They opened two locations fairly quickly. And Ashley, I know you're still kind of learning as you've gone along,"
00:08:18,"but you've ramped up your mail program pretty quickly. So we asked Ashley to jump in and share her perspective. Let's start with Wes. Can you describe what your virtual office or and or mail program looks like? What do you offer and maybe some highlights around what you know is sort of your bread and butter of that program. And Wes, I know you also offer VA services."
00:08:46,"I'd love to have you add those in. So Wes you start. Okay. And I'll hang here and we'll go around the the room. Okay, Thanks Jamie and really appreciate the opportunity to participate. We have three main virtual services I'll call it, that we offer. One is the mail, which is what we're really here to talk about today I think."
00:09:08,"And the other is telephone answering, telephone reception. And then the other is virtual assistant services. So those are the three main components that we offer. And we also probably, our bestselling package is kind of what I call our sampler platter. So we call it business identity live and it, it combines mail with kind of a low volume telephone reception service and two days of office use every month and then a listing in our buildings directory."
00:09:39,"So we package all of those together and that's a really popular package with startups and solo entrepreneurs and folks like that. How much does that cost? Much, that particular package is two 50 a month and then our, our mail is 80. I think an important note here is I think pricing will vary by market. Yeah. So West is in a class,"
00:10:02,"a building financial district in Boston. Yeah. So a really desirable address. And then Laura's in Sugarland, which is outside of Houston, Texas. And then I don't even know what city o Ocala is close to. Ashley, you'll, you'll have to fill us in. It's between, yeah, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. Yep. So when we think about pricing,"
00:10:27,"you know, you really probably just have to do some work and kinda look at maybe some analog offers and a little bit of of testing to figure out kind of where you fit there and and how that works. Absolutely. Yeah. We're able to, yeah, price fairly high compared to many parts of the US Yeah. But on the flip side are call structures high as well."
00:10:46,"So we have to Make that work. And you have a smaller location because you do well with your virtual program and that's an interesting strategy. Okay. So Wes, who just to hit on the telephone answering services, 'cause I would guess 95% of the folks here don't offer that. Who are, who's that user who, who buys that? It's like solo professionals,"
00:11:14,"like attorneys or CPAs, financial planner types. And it's also other businesses who just need assistance with their calling EE either or handling inbound calls. So either they're staff constrained in some way or maybe we can just do it more cost effectively than they can. So, you know, we have a few pretty large accounts. For example, we have a construction firm that has 40 guys out in the field doing construction,"
00:11:49,"remodeling projects, painting projects and stuff. We schedule all of of their sales appointments. And then another example for telephones is what our largest account is a regional hospital network with 12 locations and we do all of their new patient intakes. That's actually our, our largest telephone account. And that one account probably equals six dedicated offices, dedicated private offices in terms of revenue."
00:12:19,"That's a super interesting nugget. So thank you for sharing that. 'cause that's pretty meaningful revenue, which is the kind of perspective i, I wanted to share with folks on the call. Wes would, do you think that's a market specific opportunity? If you were to open in another market, would it be like a no brainer for you to offer the phone service or how would you think about that?"
00:12:42,"I think every market could use that for sure. And you know, in intelligent office is a franchise, so we have locations all over the country in a variety of different markets. And the other franchises offer it too. The other Franchisees offer it as well. Absolutely. I'll say the pandemic really changed our revenue mix, but if you go back pre pandemic,"
00:13:05,"many of the more established locations, the majority of their revenues came from telephone. And then do you outsource that answering or does your team do it? We do. You're talking about the actual answering of the phone. So we do the majority of it. Yeah. And then we have a couple of other intelligent office locations set up to back us up if we get into a peak call volume situation or something like that."
00:13:32,"And we're all using the same software and procedures and all of that. So it's a simple thing to have another location back us up. Awesome. We also work with A third party on 24 7 coverage as well. Sorry. Okay. You've got it cut right really hard because it's, it's a significant Yeah. Business line. You need to make sure you have the backup."
00:13:53,"That's really helpful. Okay. Ashley, tell us about your program and what you offer and kind of, you know, what your bread and butter is. Sure. First I'd just like to say thank you for having us on. I'm so excited to share. We offer everything from basic mailbox plans that include meeting room time to phone lines to virtual receptionists."
00:14:15,"We're working on adding in the virtual assistant. That's really interesting to me. But we also love creating custom plans for our members and we are always striving to accommodate and trying to help them meet their needs. So the best options that we've come up with have actually come from listening to the needs of our members and, and then we just make it happen."
00:14:37,"So that's basically it in a nutshell. Ashley, you don't find it onerous to do custom plans? No, I, we actually love it. I don't know why. No, I, I think we love working with individuals. Yeah. And trying to, if they need more meeting hours to make that plan that fits their needs. Yeah. I think some of us,"
00:15:01,"I certainly was like this when I ran location, the, I think that sometimes we get really focused on keeping things simple. I know I love simple models but I know from, so Adam and Zach were on the podcast and I can tell your culture is very right member driven. So that makes sense. And it sounds like it's working for your business."
00:15:24,"What do you sell most of? What's kind of driving the revenue out of that kind of bucket? We probably sell the most of our just virtual office plan. That is, it includes the digital mailbox, it has one meeting room hour and it has the address and Google my business. That's probably our basic one that sells the most. And then from there people will add on more meeting room hours if they need,"
00:15:52,"they'll upgrade to a desk membership. We find that those memberships lead to other things. Interesting. Also, great perspective. Quick side note. Okay Laura, give us your overview please. So I'm in a suburb of Houston called Sugar Land. It's a little mecca of a lot of entrepreneurs, small businesses and a very wealthy part of Houston. Not the oil business but more small businesses."
00:16:17,"And so what we offer here at Business E Suites is two packages. One is just regular mail, which is 1899 a month. And we use I Postal and anytime mailbox in our own website to get those leads. And then we end up upselling them to our virtual office because that's when they wanna use the address for Google My Business listing. And we say,"
00:16:43,"oh no, you can't do that. So we upgrade them to a virtual office and a virtual office allows them to look like they live here and work here. So the address, they get the Google My Business listing, they get a directory listing, a two day pass to come here, work a month meeting room space discounts and some signage in the building."
00:17:07,"And so I consider, well for us in this area, most of the people that are using mail are doing it to sign up for their LLC for the first time. I have a lot of people just coming out their homes ready to look bigger. And so that's, that works well. That's what we do. Yeah. I love Wes' framing of the identity package,"
00:17:33,"right? Because you know, both everybody sort of describes really businesses who need to Yeah. Start looking like a real business and acting like one, but maybe they can't, they're, they're not gonna be ready for the full office or membership. We did mail training for Community Manager program and Laura used your website and I may have used others, but you it super clear call to action,"
00:18:03,"right? It's prominent on your website so it's clear that's an offering and you're really focused on it. So I think that's one of the things about mail is it's gotta be, if you're gonna grow it, it has to be a focus. It has to be just like your, you know, offices and other memberships. You know, you are putting,"
00:18:22,"there's a marketing plan, there's marketing tactics and you're really consistent with those. Was Ashley tell us, yeah. Where do your leads come from? Platforms that you use? Sure. We get about 30% of our virtual leads from Google ads or referrals or social media posts. And then the other 70% come from the third party lead gen providers. And so Ashley,"
00:18:50,"can you just talk a little bit about how, you know, how you avoid the overwhelm of working with so many lead sources? Okay. This will have to go out to our Community Manager, Chelsea, I figured Chelsea was involved with this. Oh yes, she is a huge reason that we've had so much success with our virtual program and been able,"
00:19:14,"she's been so flexible, willing to try every partner under the sun. She's super organized, she keeps everything together over there. And so that is our big secret is our manager. She's awesome. Awesome. Chelsea, maybe you will, you'll have to tell us your secrets in the chat, but I can tell for Chelsea's in our Community Manager program, I can tell she's just right,"
00:19:40,"very like, okay, we're gonna figure this out, we're gonna make a system then we're gonna make it happen. So That is exactly right. And she's very like spreadsheets. We've got color coding, we've got, she's got folders. Like she's, she's awesome. So I can't take the credit for that 'cause that's on her. Awesome. Laura, we might have to have you share a picture later of your gorgeous male display."
00:20:08,"I maybe I, I have it in email so if I get to share my screen I can show you. So let's talk a little bit about pricing and any maybe lessons you've learned. I know in our groups over time one lesson learned people will have is they'll price too low and they'll get some questionable characters with questionable male activity. So any like lessons learned?"
00:20:40,"You know Wes, you're obviously pretty premium price 'cause you have a very premium address, but any kind of pricing, you know, frameworks or tips that you would share? Well starting out we priced fairly low just in order to build the business to attract customers. And then we've gradually raised our price. And one thing about this, one thing about Mayo is it's pretty sticky."
00:21:06,"It's, you know, it's severe pain and agony to change your business address. Yeah. Because it's all over the place. So it's pretty a pretty sticky kind of thing. Un unless the company just goes out of business or something, I don't get any pushback with annual price increases. And you know, one way to look at it is, you know,"
00:21:22,"if you have a hundred mail customers and you raise the price five bucks a month, you just gave yourself a $500 pay increase so it can add up, you know, once you get a pretty decent customer base there. So I do that once I have my, my kind of my default approach is I sign up a new customer on a 12 month agreement and I found that those that wanna do month to month or something like that often do so for a reason and they may not be the best choice of customers."
00:22:03,"I think pretty much every, any fraud situation I've had come up has been somebody who wanted to do a month to month agreement. So I charge, actually charge extra a hundred dollars a month for a month to month agreement just to make it painful. And I typically, after that initial 12 month agreement expires, I increase the price annually. I almost never get any pushback."
00:22:31,"Almost never. And it's just a good way to kind of build the, the mail part of the business. And then, you know, you wanna make sure that you offer a nice selection of added value services based on what's appealing for your particular market and really think through the pricing. So for example, in Boston it's really difficult to get into downtown Boston with the traffic and everything and it's expensive to park and all of this."
00:23:01,"So you know, I ha have a lot of even local people who choose mail forwarding or mail scanning. And so that, those two services are a huge part of our mail oriented revenues. And in fact a couple months ago I looked at just the mail scanning revenue and it just, the mail scanning equaled the private office based on revenue. Yep. Just the scanning for a month."
00:23:29,"So it can That's awesome. Add up in surprising ways. What platform, what platform are you delivering your scans? We use our copy so So You sending it via email? Yeah, so our, our copier, the brand is Kiara. We can actually program in our customer's email addresses into the copier. So we just select their email address, run it through the scanning function on the copier and it emails it straight to our customer."
00:24:00,"So. And how Do you do the billing for that? A couple. We keep a spreadsheet, we call it the service log and then those get added onto the monthly invoices for each customer. So our scanning is a dollar a page and a couple of month, a couple of years ago we actually beta tested several of the app based platforms like Sphere Mail and anytime in those and we found that our,"
00:24:25,"not only our team but also the customers, couple of customers we beta tested it with, much preferred our homegrown system. So we, after doing a beta test, we never went with any of those platforms. So we use a shipping platform called Shipping Easy, which is basically, you know, it's around the actual shipping function, not, it's not really a mail management platform,"
00:24:52,"it's for shipping and mailing stuff but it, it's not like Sphere mail or those it, it's just for outbound shipping. So that's what we use to kind of figure out what the best shipping options are based on where in the world the customer is and all that kinda stuff. There's other ones like that called like a ship station is a big one that's marketed pretty heavily."
00:25:18,"But you know, we looked at several of the leaders and settled on shipping easy as our platform of choice. Wes, what percentage of your virtual members are like local-ish, even if they're you know, in the suburbs and you're scanning things or not in Boston at all. It's, it's, I don't know exactly. Yeah it's probably about half and half."
00:25:42,"Okay. Or it, it could be more than half or not local. And I think part of that is because Boston has a little bit of a reputation or whatever so we attract a lot of biotech firms or anybody who's kind of finance oriented. Yep. 'cause Boston's kind of a money management hub and anybody who's kinda scientifically oriented, that kind of thing."
00:26:10,"Yeah. Okay. Ashley and Leslie, I think Ashley's kind of helpful example with the several platforms. I just to summarize Leslie, I think some platforms are maybe don't generate as many leads in some markets. I think if you can kind of go at it with the mindset of we're gonna test and we're gonna see you know, what works and then if it makes sense to sort of 80 20 it from there,"
00:26:37,"you know, where do we get most of our leads from and stick with those platforms. So I think think it's really a matter of just kind of letting yourself take some time to figure it out, find the systems that work and do some testing and then narrow it down or not narrow it down in Ashley's case. Right. So Ashley pri the original question was kind of around like pri you know pricing packages 'cause some folks will start and you know,"
00:27:04,"maybe the common mistake is like start with really low pricing and then you get kind of some riffraff if, if any tips that you would share around pricing or packages pricing. Some of the challenges I think people have when they first start offering mail is they'll maybe do a low price to build volume, which Wes mentioned when I say low price, like really low and sometimes you kind of get really high maintenance clients or they don't stay very long."
00:27:36,"Wes mentioned, you know, he charges more for the month to month contract. Do you have any lessons learned in terms of pricing or packages that you would share? Well We did the same. We started a little bit lower 'cause we really didn't know much about virtual mail. Oh We started a little bit clients on as we've kind of grandfathered a minute that price."
00:28:00,"But then moving forward we upped our price so we kind of did it different. I like Wes' idea of get like getting them on a annual contract and then upping it a little bit each year. But the thing that worked for us was just kind of trial and error. We, we started low and we were like okay people are buying at this price and then we upped it a little bit more and so we've kind of found our sweet spot."
00:28:27,"Ashley, since you're kind of in a more of a mid-tier market, what does your pricing look like? Like what's kind of working for you guys right now? So we have our mailbox only plan, which is mostly like a PO box and that is $39 a month. And then our virtual digital mailbox, which is, it gives them the one one conference hour,"
00:28:51,"we get the digital scan of the mail and they get a personal mailbox and a suite number and that is $69 a month. And then we have, we go up from there. Yes, a couple of notes in the chat that sometimes clients on the lowest prices tend to absorb lots of staff time. Be high maintenance. Laura though you have an 18,"
00:29:15,"did you say 1899 level? Yeah, we started off, I think we, I knew I didn't wanna do the basic package that you know like I post on anytime they recommend 9 99. I knew I didn't wanna do that. Yeah. So we started off at 1499 then I raised it to 1899. Wes, thanks for reminding me. I need to raise rates again soon."
00:29:37,"It's Always a good thing. I love that perspective. Yeah. Now I do have, we're getting ready to open another location and it is inside the middle of Houston in the Galleria area. So I will for sure be doubling my prices and it is a premium zip code and a street. So I'm curious to see how that's gonna grow. I have a larger room prepared for that and you know,"
00:30:02,"it's not something that happens overnight. It takes about two, two to three years to really see that volume because like Wes said, they're sticky, they stay with you for a long time and really male customers they don't really take up a lot of your time. And so it's good passive income as far as I'm concerned. Laura, can you talk about just kind of the,"
00:30:25,"you mentioned how much time does it take for your staff? Wes is gonna have a different perspective 'cause he's doing phone answering and and VA work, which is more time intensive. But I think that's one of the concerns folks have when they start a program is all my staff's gonna do is sort mail and yeah kind of give, give the perspective of what your process looks like and maybe even,"
00:30:47,"I don't how much time it takes. Who does the mail sorting? Anything you can share there? Well a couple things I did right off hand is I thought every mail platform that we use has its own numbering system. That way I don't have to sort through and figure out, oh is Wes is he on I postal or anytime mail? So, and I would figure out,"
00:31:08,"so I postal has 1000 and above, so suite 1000 and above. So when I see that number as a suite number, I know, oh that's that vendor. And then anytime Mail I do it from, we started off at five hundreds, now we're five hundreds and six hundreds. So we're, we're growing that. And then I have my building tenants and then whoever else is on the property."
00:31:36,"So that really helped me at the very beginning knowing, okay, when I receive mail, how am I gonna sort it? So having a numbering convention really helped number one. And then we don't do it all day long. Mail doesn't come in all day long so it's right now it is busier. So, and we, on our property, we're also a business park."
00:32:00,"We have some e-commerce people here that maybe get three to 500 packages a day. So I don't have to sort through those. But that means my deliveries are gonna be here late in the day. And so I may have, it may have to happen first thing in the morning or end of the day I don't know when the mail's gonna come because we have such high volume And so,"
00:32:22,"but on set since the only thing extra I've had to add lately is I have a gal that that used to come in on Monday mornings to sort the mail. 'cause they have a lot of weekend mail and now she can't come in. She's a college student so she's coming in sat Sunday from like one 30 to three to come in and just sort the mail."
00:32:44,"But it, Yeah, perfect. It's About an hour to to an hour and a half a day project for somebody on our staff. Which that's about What it's, yeah. For somebody who's coming in only to do the mail. I think that's great. We started having someone come in for the first two hours of the day to write, do mail,"
00:33:04,"set the space that wasn't the Community Manager and that was great. And there's, that's an easy ROI if you're building your mail program. Yeah, that would be ideal. And we've had that where you have a college student or a high school student that comes in 'cause they like the technology, they like taking pictures, they like doing all that stuff. And to have somebody I like,"
00:33:26,"I prefer the person to come in early in the morning, like you said, set the facility, come in, put the coffee pot on, sort the mail. So Jamie, I wanna say I absolutely love my male customers. I love every single one of 'em. They are baby entrepreneurs or baby customers as far as I'm concerned. And so when I hand somebody the mail,"
00:33:47,"it's a relationship and I tell 'em about, hey, you know we got a ping pong tournament coming up on on Monday, you wanna come? So they see that the building is active and they go, I love this place and I know that one day either they're gonna tell people about our business or they're gonna wanna start their business in my place. I think some folks think of male clients as like second class,"
00:34:12,"you know, or there's just like a stigma about it and it's, you're thinking of it exactly differently. What percentage of your male clients are Houston area based versus not? Most of 'em if Are local. Yeah. And, and the ones that, the ones, we have a lot of truck drivers that use our service too. So, and that's perfect for them 'cause we can just scan their mail and they Okay."
00:34:40,"Any examples of mail gone wrong? Lost mail fraud. Yep. I, I can tell a few Stories. Yeah. Okay. Pick your favorite. So, So we've been in business now 10 years. Also, just briefly hopping back to an earlier question or earlier thing you mentioned about the mail being a slow build. It is indeed. So we've been here 10 years and you know,"
00:35:07,"of course it started at zero as you'd expect in the first few years. It was a small percentage of our income. But now I just look back over the last three months and it mail is 26% of our revenue for the last three Months. So it's really just grown and grown. But you know, it's been 10 years in the making so it's not a get rich quick scheme by any stretch."
00:35:35,"But over the 10 years I've had three encounters with law enforcement related to fraud issues. Two, with the FBI one with got a surprise visit from two postal inspectors, just dropped in one day. And I can tell you with all of these, I was very thankful that I had my 1583 forms with these characters and various types of issues. Like the postal inspectors came,"
00:36:10,"the particular customer we had was evidently involved in credit card fraud. They had some kind of scheme going. So you are susceptible to this and it's definitely something you wanna watch out for and be really careful about because you know, you just don't wanna be sucked in on that. And then, you know, if it turns, thankfully all three of these issues were,"
00:36:32,"I just gave them some documents and they went away. That was the extent of my involvement. But potentially you could really get sucked in on some investigations. It could soak up a lot of your time and stuff or you know, there might even be some legal implications for you in there. So you just wanna be super careful there. And that's one reason why I like having kind of a premium price mail product."
00:36:54,"And why I also really push for a longer term agreement because most of the fraudsters Yeah. Are not gonna be the ones going for a longer term agreement. They're gonna be, you know, in and out as quick as they can. Okay. Wes, you have a, you are in a class a building. Do you have a physical directory for your virtual clients?"
00:37:15,"Like can they get directly listing? Yes, I, I have two options. So we're on the 17th floor of a high-rise office tower here in downtown Boston. And on the first floor in the lobby, which is like a lobby area for the building, they have a, a reception desk or security desk and there's an electronic directory available. The visitors can scroll through and then also the security staff uses that to figure out where,"
00:37:48,"where to direct visitors, Where to send People Okay. That are coming into the building. And then there's also a traditional suite. We call it a suite directory. It's on the wall right outside our doors at our suite. So we have both of those options available. And listings are, both of those directories are included for anyone who rents a dedicated space from us."
00:38:13,"But for virtual clients, they have, it's an extra cost option for them. Now there's that one package I mentioned before that business identity live, the downstairs electronic directory is included at no charge as part of that. And then they can do the suite directory for an extra $20 a month. And then if it's just a male client and that the mail package does not include the electronic directory downstairs,"
00:38:40,"they can do that one for an additional $20 a month or they can do both for $30 a month. And shockingly enough, I I have quite a few mail clients who choose to be listed in one or both of those directories. So that's actually kind of of turned ha it's turned out to be a nice revenue source for us. Yeah, I feel,"
00:39:04,"I get get the sense that Wes is sort of the, you know, do you want fries with that? And it's working people often. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to offer it. Yeah. Now obviously you, you can't do that in many markets, I mean, or in many buildings, you know, it's just, ours happens to be well suited for that."
00:39:21,"And also the electronic director, you know, that's controlled by the building. So I made sure to negotiate that into the lease. You have any trouble with folks coming in off the street for male clients that are on the directory, like thinking they're there but they're not. Yeah, it's occasional now they, they have to get through security on the first floor and they have to come up to the 17th floor and then talk to our folks."
00:39:45,"So it does happen on occasion. And typically we just tell them, you know, if, if the person is here to see Jane Smith, they think this is their actual office, we just say, I'm sorry, Jane's not in the office today. Can we leave her a message for you? And that's how we approach it to work because we don't wanna give away that,"
00:40:03,"Hey Jane, just in the mailbox with us, I'll just jump in and say we had a lawyer that actually did that, really used our address with a lawyer actually used our address without paying for it. Yeah. So I mean, Chelsea and I mean, it can be frustrating, but Chelsea and I, every, at the end of the month,"
00:40:20,"like we kind of make it a game. We hop onto our Google directory, see who's, you know, see if we can catch anybody using our address and then we report it and usually within a couple months it's gone. But you know, it's just another thing that you don't think about when you're starting everything. Thank you for listening to today's episode."
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