2 years 🎉 of Local Postal Solutions - Part 2 The Story So Far….

The following week after prematurely resigning as a postman Local Postal Solutions started. I say started I didn’t have a single customer lined up. I just had 10,000 leaflets designed by a printer I used to deliver too and my feet ready to pound the streets. I remember just getting up every day and walking for miles and miles and eagerly waiting for the phone to ring, the phone never rang, the poorly designed website I had clobbered together barely had a visitor. For some reason I was convinced this was the most amazing idea, it never took long for the doubt to set in.

About 3 weeks in with literally not a penny coming in, I went for a job interview for a driving job, and got offered the job. I had no choice but to accept and was due to start in 4 days. My dream shattered and the slow realisation that my idea was only something I thought was worthy. To be honest my mental state wasn’t great when I left Royal Mail and the hope disappeared so quickly in those first 3 weeks, I could feel myself spiralling downwards.

Just as I had resigned myself to starting a job, I receive a phone call from Walsh Autos enquiring about our service. We arranged a meeting and I called in. Nervous and inexperienced I was hoping to make a good impression. I’d say everything was in the balance as I maybe wasn’t prepared for some of their questions. Then they asked about my experience and I responded with 16 years service in Royal Mail, Prenton. “I know someone who worked there, I wonder if you knew him” asked one of the Walsh representatives. “I’ve been there 16 years, so I am sure I would”. And this is when everything changed (I’m not going to use the persons name). “Do you remember such an such?”. The person she named was my colleague who had taken his own life, she was his partners mother.

I can’t recall what happened in the moments that followed, all I remember was sobbing and reaching for more and more tissues.

They handed me their mail and said we will give it a trial for a few months. I still feel now that it was my colleagues way of saying “don’t give up”. Nearly two years in and we still deliver all Walsh’s local MOT reminders and their mail is still the backbone of my daily cycling deliveries.

I never took the driving job, thinking this was the break I needed, it was months before I managed to find another customer and I had to resort to delivering for Evri and fitting my own work around their hours. It was in these early months I realised most of my money was going on petrol and the only way I was going to survive was by using a bike. This was the beginning of my sustainability journey.

Parcel delivery wasn’t part of the plan till year 2 but after a chance encounter delivering a parcel, I managed to get some parcel work. As I was delivering every parcel the same day I was soon getting recommended to various businesses in the Wallasey area. My parcel service was born 9 months earlier than planned but I desperately needed to generate income to survive. As we were approaching Christmas I could feel things were getting busier and the Evri job was starting to effect my service so I left Evri to concentrate on Local Postal Solutions.

I had set up 4 postal boxes for Christmas mail and this had alerted the attentions of ITV’s flagship current affairs programme “Tonight” and we had a feature on prime time TV. When the programme aired I sat by the computer expecting hundreds and even thousands of hits on the website, the phone to be ringing non stop. The reality was so far detached from that 2 website visits and no phone calls. The roller coaster of emotions made me question myself every day, you could call it imposter syndrome. A highly successful Christmas had boosted my funds to a mere survivable level. And then came January and February and every extra penny I had made over Christmas was wiped away within weeks of literally no work except about 3 dozen letters a day.

Despite the constant addition of new customers, I was finding myself bewildered at how I had even survived before these new customers had come along. I had sold my car in autumn the year before to buy a cheaper one to raise some capital, the last remaining £1,000 of that was all I had, but not for long. The suspension had gone on the car and to fix it took nearly every single penny I had left. I still remember the day I looked at my business account and my personal account and the amount left in both of them totalled 61p. I was literally living from invoice to invoice.

I was cycling over 150 km every week to save petrol money, I was exhausted physically, financially redundant and mentally struggling. But my one saving grace is that not one single customer had gone back to using our competitors and we were always getting at least one new client every month. I knew I just had to knuckle down and ride the storm. And that’s what I’ve always done for my customers turn up every day and be present.

At some point in 2024 we were selected to be in Britains small business 100, which was great fun but as what I do is localised I never really got any traction from it. We had acquired our first school which was a massive plus for us, we continue to add schools on a regular basis. We have a very mail diverse group of customers, some send daily, some weekly, monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly. All of it is welcome as all we want to do is save our customers money and enable them to connect with their customers more sustainably and efficiently.

Christmas 2024 seen our Christmas card deliveries double from the year before, and although January and February were still shocking we have enough clients now to level out that dip. In recent months we have gained customers on a weekly basis, our leafleting service is often maxed out and more and more schools are making the switch. The future is really bright as we enter a phase of growth and exciting news throughout 2025. More about that in part 3 - Local Postal Solutions, planning for the future.

Not just a postman