What Is a Virtual Office and Why Might You Need One? A Guide

There are 31 million entrepreneurs in the United States mostly motivated by opportunity, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). A lot of these entrepreneurs have ready offices that they can go to because they work in a restaurant or have a factory or something like that.

But a lot of entrepreneurs will either work from home or a cafe near their home. Maybe they will even find a university library or community center to work from.

That’s all great when you are starting, but when you have clients and wish to appear established, a virtual office is a better choice. Many people might think a virtual office is up in the cloud network, but that’s not the case. There’s a lot to know about virtual office space, so keep reading to learn more.

Even if Your Business Can Run Online, It Will Need Some Offline Meetings

What do you do when your business has offline meetings? Hold them from your home? Go to a coffee shop or a restaurant and do a brunch meeting?

Sometimes that might work. But you can’t do that every single time. Eventually, you will need an office space with meeting rooms, desks, chairs, printers, faxes, receptionists, and more.

That’s what a virtual office rental can give you. In this scenario, you will be sharing this virtual office for rent with many other entrepreneurs who all have access to the space, to the office supplies, to the meeting rooms, and the receptionist and other admin services.

When you need to hold an offline meeting, you won’t need to scramble to find a space anymore. You have a well-established office space located in a great area, which looks professional and put together. Your clients’ impression of you will escalate as they realize you are not just a one-man shop running out of your home’s basement.

Also, if you have employees who normally work from home but need to meet up occasionally for a brainstorming session or to hold interviews, you can always rent conference rooms in a virtual office space.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a space to go to, where you can work in relative peace, without being inundated by your children’s tantrums, or other household distractions. If you wish you had a space where you could go and focus for a few hours at a time, then a virtual office space is great for that.

Having an Established Address Will Help Build Your Company’s Status

You can place this virtual office space on your business cards, website, and everywhere else as your established business address. This means all your business mail and other important items can show up at this office space, rather than going to your home and getting tangled up with your pet’s teeth or your children’s crayons.

It will also be a boon to you if, for business purposes, you need to have an address that’s something other than your home.

You also might not want to share your home address with all your clients, and everyone who comes to your website. It’s not safe for your loved ones who become more vulnerable to anyone who shows up with ill intent to your home.

The awesome thing about having a virtual office space is that you can have the receptionist handle all your incoming calls and mail. If your client shows up unannounced to your office because they saw this address on your website or if they call the virtual office number on your business card, you will have someone to escort them to a meeting room and offer them some tea while they wait.

All this establishes you even more firmly in your clients’ minds (and your own – imposter syndrome begone) as a legitimate entrepreneur. Not someone who’s trying this out for kicks or as a side hustle.

Trust is hard to build at first as an entrepreneur. But with virtual office space, you can let your clients know that you are a business that’s on the uptick, not just a fad.

A Virtual Office Space Helps with SEO Geolocation

If you are uncomfortable putting your home address on your website, you might have considered getting a PO box number and having that on your website and Google maps information. But that doesn’t help your SEO geolocation cause at all.

With a virtual office space in a prime location in your city, you can benefit from the ‘near me’ feature in search engines. People are always searching for businesses that can help them, that is also close by and Google will only show you on such searches if you have an actual location (not a PO box) to display.

Again, if your customers see your virtual office address on your website or Google maps listing and show up to your virtual office space searching for you, the receptionist will be able to help out and direct them to a meeting room while you drive over as quickly as possible.

Many entrepreneurs live in the suburbs or far away parts of town because it’s cheaper and has a better schooling system. But your business needs to be at the core of the city, to show up in local searches. With virtual office space, you can have the best of both worlds.

You and Your Business Are on Their Way Up

It can be hard to believe sometimes that you get to live such a brilliant life where you are your boss, you get to call the shots, and you get to do all this on your time and terms. It’s great being an entrepreneur.

By renting a virtual office space, you can enhance this experience of living and work as an entrepreneur even more. You are taking it up a notch.

Are you ready to make this happen? Contact FlexyVo to set up your virtual office address with zero cost set up, zero wait time, and zero loss of compliance.