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Oct 20, 2021

Bob Lachance is a Real Estate Investor, a Nationally Recognised Speaker, Mentor and Trainer who Specialises in Helping Customers Build their Businesses through Automation and Outsourcing. Bob currently Owns Four Businesses and Helped Start One of the Nation’s Largest Real Estate Coaching Programs.

In this episode we talked about:

  • Bob’s Bio & Background
  • “Who Not How” mentality
  • Bob’s journey from pro hockey player to entrepreneur
  • Why outsourcing is so important in real estate
  • How to Find and Hire the Right Virtual Assistant
  • How to integrate VAs in your business
  • E-mail Management, Cold Calling, Admin Management
  • Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned

Useful links:
https://revaglobal.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/boblachance/
https://www.facebook.com/REVAcareers

Transcriptions:

Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. All right, ladies and gentlemen, my name's Jessica galley and you're listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I have Bob on the program today. He's a real estate investor.

 

He's a nationally recognized speaker, mentor trainer, and everything related to real estate. He helps out with, and I believe Bob correct me if I'm wrong. You are a ex pro hockey player.

 

Bob (44s): I am, I played eight years and four years here. Four years in Europe,

 

Jesse (48s): Right on, well in recognition of a Leaf's a home opener here. Yeah. Great to have you on how you doing?

 

Bob (54s): Very good. Very good. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

 

Jesse (57s): Awesome. So, Bob, typically what we do, we have a new guests on the show. We do a little bit of a background on the guests. Maybe you could give listeners a little bit of your history as it relates to your career and, and real estate.

 

Bob (1m 11s): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. W what's fast forward today. I'll back into it. I run a successful virtual assistant company out of the Philippines have been doing since 2014 and also have a, a real estate company. We should be at about a hundred and probably 40 to 50 transactions this year. So we're on, we're on a pretty good trajectory there, but how I got started to get back to that, I went to Boston university on a four year scholarship for a ice hockey league, which has talked about, and then I was fortunate enough to be offered a two year contract by St.

 

Louis blues. So I left two classes short of getting my degree with the thought process of, you know, you can always go back, but being obviously you've been from Toronto and understanding the hockey mindset, I never went back. So my thought process was I could always go back and get those two classes, but as you know, you know, once life gets in the way it gets rolling. Every summer I lived in Boston, I would be working out training and never ended up back in school.

 

So it's kind of comical though. It's when you actually go in school or when you're in school, you don't appreciate it as much as when you're actually out. So I, and I'll get back. I'll get to that a little bit later, but just starting with my path. I played at eight years, four years here in us and then four years in Europe. And then my last year I had my first son and my wife was working in the United States and I was in leave. I was in Switzerland at the time and I D I had to decide whether I was gonna hang up the skates or bring her with me.

 

And she had a very successful career in medical sales at the time. So we decided that, you know, I was going to hang up my skates and figure out what I was going to do with my life. So just probably 99.9% of all people that do real estate. I was reading books and read rich dad, poor dad. I bought a course online, a guy by the name. I think he's an attorney, David wisdom all about real estate, but you know, nothing in particular. I was a course about that thick, probably about 3, 4, 5 inches thick, but I read the thing from top to bottom and decided, Hey, you know what?

 

I don't have to go back to school to be a real estate investor. So I was a real estate investor. I was quiet, coined myself to rephrase. I coined myself as a real estate investor. This is 2004, started from there. My first flipped in 2004. And I decided to really do it as a, as a passion and a career and got my first business partner. I think it was the end of 2004, 2005. I was actually door knocking to people that were losing their houses.

 

Pre-foreclosure my buddy gave me a script at the time just, and I knew it and let me, let me rephrase it. I knew nothing like zero. I came from the hockey locker room, which for those of you who actually listened this, that came from any type of locker room, you learn zero in business. You learn how to cuss. You learn how to you learn how to, you know, kinda have a, a, a camaraderie, if you will. But on the business side, you don't learn much. And being in Europe for four years, you don't have a network either like you do have here in the United States.

 

So when I got back, I was kinda, you know, you're you go through any, any athlete understands this, you go through kind of a depression. I think you're a football player, right? Jesse. Yeah. I played football and hockey and hockey. So after you're done the planning, you understand this, you go, you know, before you start, or even when you join, you jump into a different industry, you go through some sort of, kind of a depression. It's, it's, it's not, I don't like saying the word depressed, but you go through a law if you will. And it takes a little while to find out and really get your team again.

 

Right? Because when you're hanging out with your buddies and you're hanging out with, you know, you, you know, you got your, you're going to block your butt, you block for your buddy. You're going to pass to your friend, you know, and you're going to win as a team when you're out there as a solo preneur, there is a transition, right? And it took me a little while. And I, you know, when I first got in real estate, I got a deal by myself that a rehab to pretty well made about $32,000 on it. But I also realized that there's no emotion in a dollar, right? When you get a big check the first year, you know, there's a quick high, there's a quick, it's kinda like when you, you know, back in the day, when you took Sudafed three Sudafed before you played, right, you can't do that now, but I'm just saying Sudafed.

 

So I took a couple Sudafed before I played every game. Maybe some coffee too. And you get that, that you get that quick high, right? You get that quick, quick, Joel. And it's the same thing when you get a big check, but when you take a step back, there's really no emotion in money it's really has to do with the goals that you hit. So I realized I didn't want to work by myself. So I joined a real estate investment association. I saw the speaker on the short-sale industry. So I bought that course and next event again, I had no network.

 

So the next event I had this, I had to go to within the regroup I had asked, Hey, who's the, who's the best short-sale person in Connecticut. And they all pointed this gentlemen, Patrick, pre-court went up to him say, listen, do you have no idea who I am? I'm not looking for a penny, but are, do you have any openings in your business? He said, you know what? I actually am looking for a door knocker. So for those of you who know what a door knocker is, it's kind of like working your first job as a janitor, and you have to work your way up because it is not sexy.

 

It's not your you're literally, you have a list of individuals and names, and you're driving from house to house with a script knocking on a door, right. It's door to door sales in essence. So I ended up having a little bit success in that. And then I, I hired someone to take my spot, jumped into negotiating with banks, because we were doing short sales, which means, you know, their, their debt was they're over leveraged. So they had $200,000 of debt. The property is worth a hundred. So now I'm talking to banks on a daily basis negotiating, and then brought myself out of that.

 

Hired. Somebody started a national coaching program while I was investing, started a virtual assistant staffing company for not only individuals like myself, but for other students as well, that needed extra time in their day that are working part-time or full-time and needed to, you know, needed to, to offs offset some of the tasks. So I know that, sorry about the long-winded answer, but

 

Jesse (7m 38s): No, that's great. I mean, I think it touches on a, I'm sure there's listeners that are coming from the sports world. I know in real estate, in general, there's a lot of ex players of all sports, but especially here in Toronto, our office is a lot of ex hockey players. My partner was drafted to the pens, played ECHL, kind of went all over and really didn't start in brokerage until he was in his late twenties. I think it was, yeah, it was late twenties. And I can a hundred percent appreciate the fact that, you know, you got somebody staying late in the office and you're trying to figure out what what's this guy doing.

 

And he's just trying to just get caught up on things that, you know, guys had, you know, Excel and just being able to figure out the emails and everything. But I think that's probably what, at least on the brokerage. And that's probably what the draw is for a lot of players to come over to brokerage because you get that team camaraderie aspect that you maybe don't get in other businesses. And certainly not as a, a solopreneur. So Bob, when you, when you got into kind of, when you say door knocking, you mentioned that you were doing some flips at that point, was it starting to get into the flipping business and that's you started doing transactions there or was that something separate?

 

Bob (8m 49s): Yeah, so I actually did it my first flip. It was just driving for dollar. So I saw a, a house that was, you know, needed it, it needed a roof, it was beat up. You could tell it was vacant. So I got in called the broker, actually it was listed property, got in, walked in, opened the door. And there was like a, a rancid smell of cats CRN. Right. So I opened the door and I'm like, all right, I read in this book that, you know, a lot of people are going to turn away from this. So I ended up making an offer. I think the property is listed for 180 5. I made an offer at 1 35 and lo and behold, the owner accepted it.

 

And I was like, oh, what do I do now? Right. Obviously you need money, you need contractors, you need all that kind of cool stuff. But I figured it out, ended up doing okay. And then after that, it was just, you know, I had zero systems, zero marketing, nothing. Right? So that's when I actually got a door knocking when I met my future business partner and he actually taught me, he said, listen, you know, he'd go door to door. Here's one of the, the systems and strategies for getting motivated sellers to sell your houses. So my whole mindset was, I want to start from ground up to learn the business because if one day I'm in, this is what pat taught me.

 

He was my old business partner that, you know, the, the success rate of businesses that last two years is not very high. I think it's, I don't even know the rate. It's very, very low of any business being successful, let alone partnerships. So John me that's my mindset was, you know what? I got to learn everything from ground up just in case I have to start my own company, whether it's a brokerage, whether it's a real estate investment company, whatever that looks like. I think it's very important for everybody to learn from foundation down or foundation up, I should say.

 

Jesse (10m 28s): Mm. Yeah. Fair enough. So you, you kind of, you start getting into hitting your stride in terms of doing transactions, moving up in the career in terms of where you're at now. Cause you mentioned kind of on the outset talking about virtually virtual assistance and that business. And I think it kind of takes a theme of a lot of people that we've come on the podcast, basically the who, not how mindset of, of basically trying to figure out what tasks are absolutely mission critical that you do, which ones can you outsource?

 

How do you do that? Can you afford it? So how did you get into that side of the business?

 

Bob (11m 3s): Yeah, it was interesting cause we, 2007, we actually got approached. There's a company called fortune builders here in Connecticut. And, but three of our buddies that actually started it, we're, we're flipping properties. They're were flipping properties. We would wholesale them. Some properties, we'd do some short sales together, a bunch of different stuff. And they approached us because pat and I actually started our first education program with a company out of Florida, end of 2005, 2006, and then 2007, when they were launching fortune billers, they said, Hey, listen, we've never done fulfillment.

 

We've never done coaching. How do you, you know, what do you guys do? And then we started mapping it out and they said, Hey, you guys want to be partners with us handshake partners. Right? So we were, our job was to take care of this. And, and then we grew that to, I think the biggest, they were were probably about $300 million in sales. Well, took care of the backend, started a coaching program from ground up hired coaches filled from within. And so after going probably through and working with over 30, 40,000 students, there's a lot of common themes, right?

 

Not only with my own business, but a lot of our students were either working part-time or full-time. And one of the things that we've noticed, I mean, you probably see this in your business. They're not making any more time. There's 24 hours in a day. There's not much time left to do a lot of this stuff. So I was always looking for some sort of service or product to, to help our students. And then in 2013, I actually got introduced to what a virtual assistant was and virtual assistants most likely when I talk about it, it's someone who doesn't live in the country.

 

Right. And I know there's, there's people that live in country in the same country that are virtual assistants, but not in the same state, et cetera. But I got introduced to a couple of different countries. I tried India, I tried Pakistan. I tried south America. The best virtual assistants that I found were in the Philippines. So after a year of working with them, a light bulb went on and I said, you know what? There's a business here. And the partner that I had at the time had no idea what I was talking about, but I said, listen, I said, you're using virtual assistance.

 

I said, you're pretty good on the systems and processes. I helped start coaching firms. So let's create training right behind the virtual assistant industry. So we started launched our first company, 2014, tested there for two years for proof of concept. It was a big hit. And then, you know, fast forward today, we're at over, they were at about 560 virtual assistance within, within a couple countries.

 

Jesse (13m 43s): So I'm curious on that point about trying different countries, whether it's Pakistan, India, like you see a lot of, you know, Upwork or fi wherever people kind of go resources that they use to look for virtual assistance. And it's been my experience too. I've had a, I've had three virtual assistants, the Philippines, two of them, the Philippines one, not in the Philippines. And I found the same thing. And I hear a lot of people that even just colleagues of mine or friends of mine, one just comes to mind, just started a Keller Williams brokerage on the residential side.

 

And they have found success in that side. Is there, is there something about what you were looking for or real estate that it seems to be the Philippines keeps coming up as, as the place to go?

 

Bob (14m 24s): Yeah. I just think it's really more cultural based. The Philippines Philippine culture is very family oriented. They look at your business as their business and they really, you know, they, they have a lot of pride in what they do. That's one thing, but also English is one of their main languages there. A lot of people don't realize that. Of course there's other kind of other kinds of like tagalo is one of them, but English is what they're taught and the newer generation too. And they're getting, you know, their English and accents getting, you know, more improved each year that they, you know, they've learned and they, you know, think about this now they got the internet here.

 

They're watching YouTube to watch a Netflix all day long, et cetera. So it just improves on that side of it. So we just selected that because of those main reasons.

 

Jesse (15m 13s): Yeah. It was one thing I was really surprised by when I started looking into this was, you know, part of the, the friend I mentioned the business that they were doing was cold calling. And like, to me, I was like, you can't outsource cold calling you can't and they say, well, why can't you? It's like, well, we outsource it. Like we, we teach younger guys and gals every day in our office there. Why can't you do that? And part of it was the first question was if you're in Toronto, you're in Boston, you're in New York, like you have the cultural or the, the proficiency in English is one thing, but not to have an accent and immediately think it's a cold call is another thing.

 

And what surprised me is that the people that we interview in the Philippines, like the first one had a UK accent, like fluent. And, you know, as a north American, there's, there's nothing better than a cold call from somebody from the UK or it's just a very, in a very endearing or disarming accent. So that was something for sure. I, I, I could see that a hundred percent that every year you're starting to get that proficiency up higher and higher to the point where yeah, you can hire for cold calling. It's just a matter of them teaching, teaching them the same way you would teach somebody local on the specific task of cold calling.

 

Bob (16m 24s): Yeah. And that's a great point. I literally had a, I had a presentation or a, I don't know if it was a podcast or a webinar to a, a real estate. It was a, it was a mix of investors and agents. And we had that this same conversation. And a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, I live in the Northeast, Northeast, Connecticut, United States. And I don't know if anyone's ever been there, but you know, growing up in Boston and Connecticut, there, there's a different kind of attitude there with people.

 

Right. So if they are okay with having a Filipino call them and they're giving them information, then anybody in this world will be okay with someone from the Philippines because you know, the attitudes of the Northeast are kind of like, you know, they look at you a certain way, like, what's your angle? What are you putting in that? So, so just, just to that kind of going off of that, if you have the right script and like you said, they follow a process, the main thing for any, whether it's it's the brokerage side or the investment side, the only thing that you want as an operator is for them to pretty screen that potential lead to say, yes, I'm interested to talk to either Bob or Jesse or whoever.

 

That's all you want. You do not want any, any virtual assistant closing a deal for it. Because if you do, it's your, it won't work. It's your business to close those deals. So driving those motivated leads to you. It's a, it's a very good way to keep your energy.

 

Jesse (17m 57s): Yeah. I think that's, that's for those listening that are looking at on the say on the investment side, you're calling off market deals because of how crazy our market is right now, especially industrial and multi-racial, but you're calling those owners of property. And you're trying to figure out if they're sellers. The, the thing that clicked for me, especially with the VA side of things is that their goal is not the same as yours. When you're calling, when I'm calling. It's a certain, I know that I have the ability to pivot to it, to the sale, but even for myself, the first part of the call is usually, you know, not somebody is not going to say, okay, yeah, well, I'll sell right here.

 

So what I underestimated was what you just said, the piece about them, first of all, their goal is to get them in contact with, you know, their team lead or their that's, who that's you, whoever, you know, whatever way you describe getting that call, but it's basically booking a meeting for us and to, to actually close the deal. And what I underestimated was that, that layer of having that seniority, when you go on the call, it actually helps you because it looks like you, you know, you have a staff of people that your, your time is valuable too.

 

You're not just calling.

 

Bob (19m 3s): Yeah. Yeah. And, and it weeds through a lot of the thinking about this. If you're sitting by your desk all day long, calling four hours a day, I guarantee you will be burnt out. Right. I mean, it did for me. So what I did, I didn't finish my, actually my, I didn't finish my story on every day from 10 o'clock to 3:00 PM, I would door knock. And then I would go home in that same list, I'd go to either white pages, four eleven.com or whatever. And I would skip trace the number in out and hammer the phones before I would have dinner. Cause obviously my wife would have killed me if I, if I kept working all night, but that's what I would do all day long and over time.

 

And that beats you up, that beats you up. If you're hammering that all doing that, if that's the only thing you're going to do. Yeah.

 

Jesse (19m 44s): That's a lot of fatigue. I mean, even, even in our industry, you do that for your first couple of years at most. And then hopefully, you know, you get some, some deal volume. So Bob, in terms of, for somebody that's, they are completely outside of the realm of, of hiring somebody. It doesn't seem like something that'd be part of their business at this point. A lot of times people that justification will be the costs, which, you know, I think Kevin kind of get dispelled fairly quickly with the fact that you're outsourcing it. But the, just the fact that talk a little bit about the need for one, when people say, I don't think I'm at that stage yet.

 

Yup.

 

Bob (20m 22s): And I look at it. It's, it's funny. You said that. Cause I had this conversation earlier with someone too, I look at is, and this is not what I, I, how I looked at things when I first started, I look at things as an investment now. Right. So if you're going to hire somebody, it's not a cost, it's an investment. Right? So we just added a transaction coordinator in our office. And that to me is a huge investment because that's going to give your team is going to be way more right then if you don't have it.

 

So that's the way I look at adding a, let's say a cold color because you have to look at what we do on a daily basis. And you say, okay, if I'm doing a $10 an hour task, most likely I'm gonna have a $10 an hour bank account, right? Because if you're doing those tasks, our jobs as business owners or whatever role managers, whatever role we are is not to be cold calling all day. It's not to be, you know, spending our time prospecting. It's not to be, you know, doing admin work, posting social media, doing all of that stuff that you should literally look at your calendar for the next two weeks, write down all of your tasks, identify what tasks you could take off of your plate and pass off to somebody else.

 

Whether it's a virtual assistant or your office assistant, whatever it is. Right. And then you'll realize like, wow, I actually have 20 plus more hours of my week. Hey, you may, you may decide to go to a Leafs game then and get out of office, get out of your office early. But if you have that extra time, then you could decide, Hey, do I want to use that to build this or build this or build this or go on vacation or whatever it is. But you'll realize with an extra 20 hours, you can do a lot.

 

Jesse (22m 5s): Yeah. For sure. What do you find from the individuals that you work with in real estate? What do you find is the task that they find that is the one that they end up saying, this is something I, I need more time to do or when they take these other things off their plate, they're like, this is really the thing I should be focusing on.

 

Bob (22m 23s): So are you saying that the tasks typically that they're doing, are you saying then that when that's off or do they do

 

Jesse (22m 29s): Once, once they offload, like you said, you go through your tasks, you, you identify the ones that you don't need to be there that you can offload to the VA after that, do you find there's one or two tasks that those individuals find that, okay, here, this is what I should be focusing on. Okay.

 

Bob (22m 44s): So yeah, that's kind of tough question, but I'll give you, I'll give you the answer of me personally. What happens when you, you're not overwhelmed and you're not looking at this phone, you want you, you're not checking the list and checking the box. You could actually take a step back and look at your business through a 10,000 foot overview. And once you actually can do that, it's kind of like sports, right? When you're, when you get better, the game gets slower, right? So it's kind of the same concept. And in, in, in business, if you could then have more time, you could pull yourself out, you could see how things are moving, right.

 

They move really, really slow. So now you'll be looking at your acquisition team, how many calls and now you can really oversee them. How many calls are they doing? Maybe you're going to listen to calls maybe, oh, you're going to realize, now you need to add another individual on your team. So you could really look at it on a and again, this all depends on what type of business you're in. If you're in the commercial brokerage right now, you're going to be building relationships, going to dinner with a banker or with a v-neck or you'll have that much more time to build your business and look at your business in a different light.

 

Does that, does that?

 

Jesse (23m 51s): It makes sense. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think it, it, it is probably a tough question because I find it'll probably be different for each type of individual and worker or, or type of entrepreneur, especially. I think that's a good point because I feel like most entrepreneurs like pure entrepreneurs at heart, I think are, are creative and big picture. And part of, one of the worst things you can do is get them bogged down in, in my new HSA and task oriented things. And like you said, it's almost like a it's sports or it's like Neo in the matrix, everything kind of slows down and you know, you're seeing everything around you and you can finally say, you know, what are we doing in six months?

 

What are we doing a year from now? And have that big picture plan.

 

Bob (24m 33s): Yeah. And you can start, you can start doing quarterly, you know, start setting quarterly goals. And you know, a great book has traction. Right? Very, very good book to read, to start that scaling up as another one, but it's really good. You could now start implementing this in your business and you could do more training. You know, there's nothing more important as you know, is, is training your team because, you know, if you could have spend more time on the ground with the team training, they're going to be that much better themselves in the companies you have that much better.

 

Yeah.

 

Jesse (25m 3s): Fair enough. So when you let, for example, if you have somebody that, whether it's, you know, most listeners are on the real estate end on the investment side, when you have an individual that's looking for a virtual assistant, they hire the virtual assistant. Do you find that there's kind of a hierarchy of tasks that you, you know, you say start with these types of things before you go, for instance, into more sales oriented stuff. So here's an email list that we need cleaned up, or here's a know here's some administration work that we need done and then move them towards sales or cold calling or acquisition, or is there it's, everything's, you know, everybody's different.

 

Bob (25m 42s): Yeah. You know what, that's an extra, very good question. And the answer is everyone's different. We identify that right or front, because the way our process is we have a sourcing and recruiting team in the Philippines. We also have a training team where they train three to four weeks a month on real estate tasks. And then we have a placements team where we use predictive and index and disc profiling. So once it gets to the placements team, we already know when sales comes in, when an individual wants a cold call, or let's say, it's almost like match.com and in placements, right.

 

They match up the, the disc profile, that predictive index in the qualities that, that particular virtual assistant has with the tasks that you're looking for, I'm looking for. So that's what we do as a company to match them up. Because you know, you know, this, if you've ever, if you've ever gone on a company like Upwork, it's a pain in the butt, right. You have to sift through hundreds and hundreds. I mean, I hired here in my office and I use wise hire or indeed or whatever, it's the concept I got to do all the heavy lifting.

 

Right. So we, what we did in our, my Reva global company is we funded all of that heavy lifting and just hand it over to them.

 

Jesse (26m 53s): Yeah. It's funny. It's almost a, the irony of when you do go on Upwork, you almost want a virtual assistant to, to hire for you on Upwork tonight. When you, when you say disk, just, just so I'm following you, it's like the personality tests, like the, the profile. Okay. So you go to that, to that level of, of granularity when you're trying to match up the VA with the professional. Yep. Correct. And what, what was the kind of the origin of that approach where you start actually looking at all right, is this person really psychologically the right person for this task or for this, this matchup?

 

Yeah.

 

Bob (27m 32s): And you started looking at that over the years. You know, it started, like I said, I started this in 2014, you'll realize that, you know, cold callers tend to be a certain kind of profile. Right. And you'll have, you know, bookkeepers are a certain type of profile because you'll never want to put, and I'll give you an example. These is accurate it's dominance, right? So you have dominance and eyes for influence interaction or interactive. So those type of individuals, they love being on the phone. Right.

 

You know, just the fi finish up that S S is for, for a steadiness and a CS for consciousness. Those are more of your bookkeepers that are really attention to detail. You know, you know, there's a lot of salespeople, you know, their attention to detail. Sometimes you don't want them.

 

Jesse (28m 19s): There's a couple of zeros there.

 

Bob (28m 21s): Exactly. So that's how we look at that to, to help, you know, find the best fit.

 

Jesse (28m 27s): Yeah. And I think that's a missing piece with a lot of it. I think that goes for not even VAs. I think that's just hiring in general, trying to match up culture. And that's, you know, it goes back to the beginning of our discussion here, you know, where you have certain industries, I find are more conducive to X athletes. It's a very, you'll have very similar cultures and working together.

 

Bob (28m 49s): Yep. Yeah. There's I mean, you know, ex athletes, it's typically it's sales, right? You got a lot of Phi X app, that's going in a financial industry, right. Medical industry, same thing, pharmaceutical industry. That's a lot of how, how a lot of these companies, actually, I got a buddy that's pretty high up in principal financial, and that's what they do. They look at, you know, they look at resumes from, from bigger companies. And I know there's a lot of colleges that are tying to some companies now, which is actually really, really, really good.

 

And you know, the funnel.

 

Jesse (29m 21s): Yeah. Would you not to put you on the spot here, but would you be able to name a couple tasks or jobs that you would think, or that most people think is, is something they wouldn't put on a VA, but, but you've, you've found success in it or are there certain things that people are surprised that VA's can, can do?

 

Bob (29m 43s): Yeah. I mean, on the multifamily level, just talk about the multifamily side. We have a lot of our multi-family investors. We have a lot of our blog. We have a lot of single family investors that own hundreds of units. Right. I have one individual that has 15 virtual assistants with us that does everything from bookkeeping to taking tenant calls, to doing tenant placements. Right. So those are some of the things off the bat right away. The other marketing properties that are actually some of those properties that go vacant, someone needs to then start marketing them and push them around to all of the sites that they have.

 

The there's a, some syndicated sites. So you push them out too. So there's a lot of those types of tasks that other people don't think of in reference to that. Another one is, is a big part of all of our businesses. I mean, you have a podcast, right. It's using a virtual assistant to splice up your videos and send it out to your, whether it's your email list or whatever list that you have posting it on YouTube posting on Instagram, posting it on Facebook, all that kind of stuff that takes a lot of time. And it's a pain in the butt, right.

 

So I have a podcast. That's what we do.

 

Jesse (30m 52s): Yeah. 100%. It is a, it becomes a bit of a full-time job, but, and once you hit your stride with something like that, really the hardest, the hardest part I found is the, is that setup piece. So like you're saying whether it's going an Upworker, it's going on another site, it really, a lot of it is that finding people and you find, you find that you, you really need a virtual system for that job itself, just trying to get other people on.

 

Bob (31m 15s): Yup. Yeah, for sure. And, and, you know, it took me a little while at the beginning and that, that was the business model that we, we figured out at the beginning because of the pain, you know, I felt you could go for places that, you know, I always look at in this kind of funny, you look at, I look at my company, I'm not the cheapest. Right. And I've, I've come to realize after 17 plus years in business, if you go for the cheapest, you're going to get the cheapest. Right. That's the way it's pretty, you know, you start looking at that, the older we get, you start seeing things a little different.

 

And I always go back to, to this one of my first houses I ever bought, I bought a home Depot cheap door for 99 bucks. And the, and it was a you're the next door and every winter and every summer, my, either he bill or electric bill was through the roof. And I was looking at that door doors. I think I probably should've spent probably over 500 bucks and I probably would have saved thousands of them, thousands and thousands of dollars. So that's the way I look at, you know, you pay for in life, you pay for what you get rewarded, you pay for

 

Jesse (32m 22s): Yeah. A hundred percent. So just wrapping up close to the end here, we usually have a set of questions. We ask every guest, but before we do them, I'm, you know, selfishly on the VA side, I have a question about email and calendar management and, you know, just like a lot of these things that you think can't get outsourced, that it turns out that you can, from an email management point of view, how, what do you recommend if somebody is they've, you know, for whatever business it is, they want somebody to offload or shoulder some of the things that they're doing through email, you know, for strategies from that point of view, whether it's calendar and email, just email and you know, what techniques do you find these that, that people are, that are the VA's are doing?

 

Are, you know, the aggregating, the most important ones. Are you training them up on that piece?

 

Bob (33m 13s): Yeah. So just on, on email management, I mean, we could get, I don't know how many emails you get a day, but I get a billion. Right. And you get some that don't, you know, they're just junk mail. You signed up for a Travelocity Expedia and they sell your email over to something else and they sell it to something else. Right. So I find what works out well as virtual assistance, just sifting through and going through each, probably each hour and then getting through some of those. And then we set up a side email to send the really important ones over to.

 

So that's how it worked out very well. It saves that does save a lot of time. I know it sounds so simple, but if you actually took the time and you're like, all right, you're looking at, you're looking at your emails, how many junk emails you actually get per day or emails that just waste your time and are not important for you on a daily basis. It's hours upon hours on a day.

 

Jesse (34m 8s): Yeah. And it's, it's time is one piece of it. But I think another piece for sure is just the stress. It's, you know, when you look at your phone and there's 200 emails or there's 78, whatever it is like you go, if somebody can be like, okay, I have somebody, whatever. I was just text message or emailed. I know those are the important ones. I don't have to stress about it. I can manage it. Yeah.

 

Bob (34m 26s): And I, I know if anyone's like me, it's I look at this, I gotta get mine down to zero.

 

Jesse (34m 31s): Yeah. I'm the same way. I, if it's over like 20, I'm starting to get stressed. Awesome. Well, we've got four questions. We typically ask every guest. So if you are a, if you're ready to go off, throw them at you, let's do it. All right. What's something, you know, now in your career or business, you wish you knew when you started out

 

Bob (34m 52s): Don't chase the shiny objects. Because typically those shiny objects where losing a lot of money and wasted a lot of time.

 

Jesse (34m 60s): I like it in terms of mentorship for younger people getting into, in, into the industry, whether it's real estate or other specific areas, what would you say to them? What's your view on mentorship?

 

Bob (35m 12s): I say 100% invest in it. 100% because mentors will cut your learning curve over time and will make you way more money than being a, a lone Wolf in a, in a solo preneur and saying, Hey, I can do it all myself. You know, if you learn anything from, from, from sports it's you need a team. I don't care if it's Wayne Gretzky, right? Wayne, Gretzky has a team with them. Doesn't matter. Right? I mean, look, how good look, how good Toronto is? They have a lot of sprinkles stars, right?

 

If they learn how to play together, they might win a cup. Right?

 

Jesse (35m 46s): So fingers crossed any resources or books you're reading right now that you'd, you can share with the listeners.

 

Bob (35m 55s): I would, I would definitely say books like scaling up or traction or some of the books that 100% I would highlight. And we talk about our, in our business, outside these walls here all the time. And I think those are, if you're going to read some books, those are very, very powerful books. The other one is one of the, the ones that I think is for me, it has been very powerful as a it's called a compound effect. Darren. That's a very good one. Yep.

 

Jesse (36m 21s): First car make and model.

 

Bob (36m 23s): First car was a Nissan Maxima, white Nissan Maxima. This is when I got my signing bonus. I bought a used one. So it was back. This is hallway back.

 

Jesse (36m 33s): That's awesome. Right on Bob. Where, where can listeners find you on the interwebs?

 

Bob (36m 40s): Yep. Actually you go to my website@rivaglobal.com, R E V a global.com. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. So you can find us there. We have a podcast called Friday coffee break. It's on every Friday at 10:00 AM. Eastern standard time. So you check me out there and yeah, all my contact information is out there.

 

Jesse (37m 4s): My guest today has been Bob Bob. Thanks for being part of working capital.

 

Bob (37m 9s): Awesome, Jesse, thanks for having me.

 

Jesse (37m 18s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five-star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care.