Virtual Assistants are a Dominant Force in RE
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Sean is joined by Bob Lachance. Bob is the owner of REVA Global LLC, specializing in virtual assistants for real estate professionals, and attributes his successes to many ups and downs he's faced in his life. During the interview, Bob speaks on his REVA business, how virtual assistants are becoming a dominant force in the industry, and how to manage them within your business.
Key Topics
Tell us about your background
What 3 things do you need to know about building your team?
How do you determine what you can delegate to your VA?
How can I inspire my team to hit their KPI’s?
Connect with Bob LaChance:
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Abigail: [00:00:00] Welcome to the next level American dream podcast brought to you by Thomson multifamily group. Your hosts, Abigail, and Sean will discuss how you can take your American dream to the next. The real estate investing business practices and personal development. Join us. As we share our experiences as a father, daughter, duo, who are trying to accomplish their goal of financial freedom, we hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American dream.
Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. Welcome to Next Level American Dream podcast. We have an amazing guest for you today, but first, please make sure you have subscribed. If you have not yet. We also love getting your feedback. Food likes comments, ratings, and reviews today. Bob Lachance joins Sean on the podcast.
Bob is the owner of Riva global LLC specializing in virtual assistants for real estate. For. And attributes a lot of his success to ups and downs he's faced during [00:01:00] his life. During the interview, Bob speaks on his rebook business and how virtual assistants are becoming a dominant force in the industry and how to manage them within your business.
If you found any value from today's episode, then please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit Thomsonmultifamilygroup.com to start taking your American dream to the next level through passive investors.
Sean: Hi, Bob. Thanks for coming on the show. How you doing?
Bob Lachance: Sean, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Sean: Well, Bob, let's start with just a little bit of your background, kind of where you came from and then what you have going on today.
Bob Lachance: Absolutely two second background with the school bus and university back a long time ago, I played played ice hockey there. I signed a professional contract, so I played played AHL, which is one step underneath the NHL four years.
And then I went to Europe for four years and then retired from that and jumped into real estate right away. And the main reason why just just to let you know, I, I I actually left two classes short of getting my [00:02:00] degree at Boston university. So I either had to go back to school when I retired or jumped into an industry that didn't need any bares of entry, which means a degree.
So I did a lot of research in real estate, kept coming to the top. So I started started down the path of real estate. My first deal was actually a rehab. After that I jumped in the short-sale world. This is back in 2004. And then through that helped start a couple while I was investing in real estate, helped start a couple of real estate education programs.
This is back in oh five was the first one 07 was the second one. And while I was investing as well, I started my first virtual assistant company back in 2014. And right now I am investing in commercial. Like we talked about before we jumped on, I'm also have a real estate investment company here in Connecticut as I run my virtual assistant company.
So we have a staff here in Connecticut and we're we're doing wholesaling buy and hold single family, single family, [00:03:00] a one to four. Syndication investing as well. I'm also doing rehabs, whole tale, a bunch of different stuff. The, and the. Single family market as well. And we use our virtual assistance not only obviously offering to our clients around the country, but also we use them in our own business to drive in revenue.
So that's a long and short. I know we have packed a bunch and you'll ask a lot of questions. So.
Sean: Yeah, well, let's start with so I think what we want to talk to you about today is the VA world. So I, you know, I have people asking me all the time about my VA and how we get started and, and how to use VAs. And I think a lot of people think of a VA as sort of an easy button in their business.
And in some ways they are. But they're not, they're not just a turnkey solution all the time. You, you still have to train them and work with them and you know, their staff members, they're just, they're just like any other staff member. They're just having to work virtually. So let's talk some about some of the things that sort of key components to creating a virtual staff that, that, that is that'll be successful.
So are there, are there like two or three [00:04:00] things that you want to make sure you look for or, or do to, to build a virtual team?
Bob Lachance: Absolutely. You know, first thing you have to decide is if you're going to use a company like my, myself and that I own, or you're going to go and get your own virtual assistant, because I think that's where you have to look, you know, there are sites out there that you could go get your own.
They're going to be less expensive, but you're going to have a lot more headache. And what I mean by that is, so for us, we take care of recruiting. We take care of running through all the applications. We do three steps on the recruiting side and we prescreen everybody, every applicant that comes through.
So we go through thousands of applications per month to get to the cream of the crop. And then once they actually pass through our sourcing or recruiting team, they go to our training team and we train them for, for three to four weeks on different aspects of real estate. And then once they actually get through training, not everybody, not everybody gets their training as well.
We have a, a [00:05:00] very high rate of individuals, virtual assistants that don't actually get through. Now, the reason being is we want the best of the best that comes out of that. You know, the whole pool from recruiting to training, it's important for us to weed out the individuals that won't work out for you.
Right. So we go through that process, then it goes to our placements team and our placement seems kind of like match.com. Best way I could explain it. We have a client that comes in, let's say they want property management tasks. We want to make sure that that VA fits the perfect disc profile. We do predictive index as well with those exact well makeup that you want and the tasks of, of what you want in reference to let's say property management, some type of tasks.
I know you and I spoke about this before that it's kind of like hiring somebody in house. Not every single person can do every task. So what I mean by that, if you have a cold caller, You're probably not going to want them to do [00:06:00] bookkeeping activities because they have total they're, they're, they're predictive in this.
The DISC profile is a lot different. Then, you know, when you have a bookkeeper type kind of profile so fast forward after that, once we pick the perfect match for you, then it goes to our operations team and you have a manager that manages the VA slash client relationship. So that's a long and short of what that process looks like.
Sean: Yeah. And if you go find your own person on your own, you have to, you have to put everybody through that. You know, I, I I, I found my own virtual VA. I guess virtual VA's redundancy, but I found my VA. And we had to put them through the disc test through the training. We train them on all of our, our stuff ourselves.
You know, we, so we went through that whole process. It takes months, you know, I have a whole training system built out. I use Podio for my CRM, but I have a Podio can do a number of things and I have all that in my CRM. So there is quite a lot that you have to go through to kind of get someone vetted and fully functional in your business.
And that's what I was saying. I think a lot of people just think of a VA is like a, here's an easy button [00:07:00] and it's not exactly. You guys make it somewhat easier because you kind of take on that front end portion of it. But even, even still, once you have someone on your team that even if that wants you to do, they've gone through sort of your training, your vetting process, it's still, you still have to train them in your individual business and do your individual tasks the way you want them done work on your KPI.
So there's a lot of individual Business components to it that, that you still have to manage and maintain and train into that person, I think. Right.
Bob Lachance: Yeah. And I can add, definitely add to that. It's kind of, and I, I use this example, you know, a lot of, I think some of your listeners have, have gone through maybe education programs or real estate coaching programs or whatever it looks like.
Right. They got trained somewhere, you know, everyone who goes through training, they'll learn the same, a hundred percent of the same thing. Then what you do in every business, it's always the 80 20 rule. You will change that 20% to fit you in Dallas. I'll change my 20% the fit, you know, my, my business here in Connecticut, right?
So it's always the 80 20 rule. It's [00:08:00] that 20%. No matter if you hire a virtual assistant or you hire someone in house that's going to change compared to everybody else in in the United States. So for example, you use Podio, right? So you'll have, you're using Podio, but you'll have a, another investor using a different CRM, like Salesforce or a different CRM real flow or whatever they use out there.
It's going to be that little tweak that you're going to have to train. Your your, whether it's in-house or your virtual assistant on that, a typical tool that you're going to use. Does that make sense?
Sean: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's what I did. I have, I have a ton of tools, you know, if you look at your, if you look at your business, it's funny.
The training, when I built my training system, it started to amaze me at how many different applications I use. There's like 12 applications that I use on a daily basis. And you have to train all those things to your, you know, because Dropbox has a specific way to be used, you know, all these different things.
So, it's funny. Those things. That's what I was talking about. Those things are going to be critical and training your VAs, but let's talk about some [00:09:00] of the things that you, you see people using VA's for in their business. What are some of the most common or more, most, I guess, requested tasks or jobs that, that you see people coming to you for.
Bob Lachance: You know, a lot of it is phone work. Right? Because you look at any you know, you, you look at any individual out there, majority of the individuals and I'm going back, I'm just getting this data from going back from 2004. So I have a lot of data points. Right, right. A lot of individuals do not like being on the phone all day.
Right. It takes a certain individual, you know, cold calling, setting appointments, taking calls, right? So you look at you know, if you look at the multifamily side, we have, we do have a lot of multifamily individuals that use our virtual assistants and how they're using them are different. Whether tenant screening, whether the bookkeeping, you know, whether they're getting calls, think about how many complaints if you have, if you have multifamily properties or you're a buy and hold investor.
You're going to have, whether it's maintenance, inquiries, complaints, whatever it is, you don't want to [00:10:00] be taking those calls all day long in your cell phone. You'd rather have a third party doing it, which is one of our virtual assistants. There's a lot of clients that use our VA's to handle. Tenant screening, looking at applica applications marketing open units for rent or some other ones.
So that's just a couple of them, a lot of phone work, and a lot of interacting with clients are some of the tasks that are there. Also social media management. There's a big there's a, a lot of our clients who use social media management as well.
Sean: The social media for me is a big deal actually. So you can have a virtual assistant that can handle those things. And I think some of the things that you just mentioned that one of the, I guess, critical things for me would be putting parameters around those. Those tasks. Right? So if someone is handling like your incoming calls and things, they kinda need to know how that process needs to work.
Right? How critical is, is having a clear process mapped out for those job descriptions and those job titles. And then, and then I [00:11:00] guess, performance indicators, too, right? So you, you probably want to have a clear process for each task and then a clear performance indicator. So they know if they're winning or losing it when they're doing their job.
Bob Lachance: You know, that is a great point because I think it's very, very important, no matter what you're going to have. So when when I hear you say process, I think it's really important because let's say let's just use a simple task, like lead-generation and cold con let's just use that as a perfect example.
Right? You could send over a list. That with phone numbers, because that list has been skip, trace, let's say use a a system called like real flow or prop string. You pull down data, whether it's a list of multi-families, then you get them skip trace to where you get phone numbers in. So now you're building that process.
So one process would be a log to a prop stream, pull down the list that fits within. This buy box, right? You have, you know, 10 plus units in this area, et cetera, et cetera. Now you download that [00:12:00] list. You actually get it skiptrace to where you get the best possible phone number for that particular record.
And then that's one of the processes. Then you're also going to be cold calling, following this particular script. So as you create that process, You're going to hand that off to a virtual assistant, that's going to be doing and filling, fulfilling exactly what you want them to do. And then as soon as they get someone who yes, they raise their hand that says, yes, I'd love to entertain an offer, then boom, that would go to you, Sean.
Or that would go to me or whoever does your acquisitions in your office. So that would be an example of a process there. And then I'll also talk about a KPI, the numbers you're talking about, then it's gonna. How many dials per day, how many connects, how much talk time and how many individuals are interested to sell.
So that would be just an example of the metrics or KPIs we're talking about.
Sean: Yeah. And so [00:13:00] how do you guys I don't know if in your business really, do you guys work with your clients to sort of set those parameters or is it, is that something that's so individual that it makes it difficult for, for you to, to kind of dial in for people's businesses?
Or how does that work?
Bob Lachance: No, you know what? We do a bunch of that in our own office. So when someone gets on a call and says, Hey, Bob, you know what, walk me through a little bit of what you guys do. We have our missions team that can help, you know, figure that out for you because we have different investors. We have multi-family investors, we have single family investors in those numbers will, you know, if you look at it, all those numbers will be very, very accurate.
And in the same, because number one, if you're pulling records, You need X amount of records coming in, right? And you need Y amount of cold calling and you'll get X amount of results. Because when we look at it, I have a whole cold calling team from my own office, and this is what we do on a daily basis.
Right. And if you have a, just like you said, your tool, here's another example. An X amount of records, [00:14:00] you use a predictive dialer, right? It's relined dialer. You're going to be able to dial a lot more than if you want your virtual assistant calling through Google voice and doing one. Calls. Right. So your numbers are definitely going to be tweaked a little bit, but in the end it all comes up to the same end result.
How many appointments did he do you need to set per week to turn into a deal?
Sean: Right. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the other jobs that so we talked about calls, you know using VAs for phone work social media. And you mentioned bookkeeping a couple of times sort of what, what sort of jobs is there a limit to what people can do virtually or is there, is it just, can you find people to do underwriting?
I mean, where's the, where's the top of the heap there? Can you, do you have CFO level people or what is it that people virtually can do?
Bob Lachance: So typically what we specialize in, it's not the CEO level. And then here, here's the way I look at it each and every one of our clients, they run their business. We, in the way I look [00:15:00] at it is if I'm doing $10 an hour tasks, it's going to equate to a $10 an hour bank account.
So everyone always asked me about what do you do first? I know I need help my business. I am, you know, I'm a hamster. I'm a, a, what do you call it? A hamster in a wheel
Sean: hamster wheel. Yeah.
Bob Lachance: I keep running. I keep running and running. What's the first thing that, that I do to help that I say, grab your phone and for the next two weeks, write down every single task that you are doing.
And at the end of those two weeks, you're going to realize you're gonna look at a majority of those tasks and you're going to say, wow, those are $10 an hour tasks. I should not be doing these any longer. I should be busy out there building my business and running my business and going to actually, so think about this.
If you have a some of the tasks, you know, you're in multifamily, it's, it's competitive out there. Right? Right. So would it be best use of your time? Calling on [00:16:00] the phone all day long, trying to set appointments, or would it be once the appointment is set meeting with that individual. It most likely be meeting that individual it's most likely raising money, bringing on more investors to invest with you.
It's that side of it. It wouldn't be upfront. So I would look at your calendar and in those next two weeks, look at those tasks that you want to take off of your plate and hand it off to somebody that's not, you know, cause a lot of those tasks you realize it's not putting money in our pocket.
Sean: Right. Exactly. So it's really, it's really the, the, the jobs you want to focus on, or the things that, like you said are the $10 an hour jobs that, that can be sourced out to somebody.
And those things that are kind of slowing you down from doing the more higher level things, right. That kind of how you would judge
Bob Lachance: it's the, it's the tasks that you look at that put money in your pocket compared to the ones that don't. Like, what are the tasks that are going to put hundreds [00:17:00] of thousands of dollars in your pocket rather than a task that's only going to put $10 in your pocket because that's the way you got to look at exactly.
I mean, how much, how much is your time worth? Right? How much is my time worth? It's a lot more, definitely a lot more than the $10 an hour for if you're running your own business, you have to look at it that way. Just switch. I know a lot of people, sometimes, you know, when they hear me say that they kind of switch a thought process in their mind, like, you know what.
So it's just, that's just another way to look at it.
Sean: Yeah. Because most, most of the day you're just kind of like doing whatever it has to be done. Right. And you're not really thinking about, is this what, what's the value of this to me and my business. And I think it's helpful to kind of start thinking that way to say, what is this really bringing back to me in ROI?
Every time I do something every, you know, every little thing you do and you can start to sort of define your role even a little better too. And those things, like you said, that you can outsource, you should outsource for sure.
Bob Lachance: It's your return on investment in time? Just like you said it, I mean, you nailed it perfectly.
Sean: Yeah. So it's if someone is trying to figure [00:18:00] those things out, if they're trying to say, Hey, what, here's my business, here's what I'm struggling with. I'm a solo preneur. I'm out hustling deals all day long. I need to get some of this off my back is, is, is calling you a good idea for them to say, Hey let's figure out what, what help I need and, and how to go about getting it.
Is that, is that where people would start with you?
Bob Lachance: Yeah. So our missions team, we set up a strategy session with our team say, Hey, listen, here's how my business is. And we'll go over exactly. You know, what you need. What some ideas are for you to offset and take some stuff off your plate here and put them on your plate here.
Cause you always look at it. You know, what can you do with an extra 20 hours? Of time, what can you do with an extra 40 hours of time? I know I could do a heck of a lot with an extra 20 or 40 hours. It's the same thing for all of us. You know, that's listening to this. That's how we have to look at it.
If we could get 20 hours a week back or 40 hours a week back of our time, what can we do to really raise the bar for our business?
Sean: So someone [00:19:00] can contact you and say Bob, I, this is my, this is what I look at my, my day looks like this is one of my business, looks like, you know, do I need two VA's,I any one VA, can they do these tasks?
And they can, you can kind of help them map out a process or a, not a process, but a solution to the things that they're seeing in their business. And they can, they can come to you guys and you can help them do that. Right.
Bob Lachance: Yeah. We have our mission team that can walk through that. And then. Once you actually have once you're on board as well.
We have, we call it CSM client service managers really look through and set up a 90 day plan for you and walk you through exactly what we've seen through the years and years, and years and years of doing this business.
Sean: Okay. Awesome. Well, Bob you're you're, you're unique in that you you're achieving your American dream and living your American dream.
I, I can tell. And then you're also helping other people through VA's and helping their businesses and things. And I ask everybody on the show, kind of what, what is the American dream mean to you?
Bob Lachance: Yep. That's a very good question. Now for me, I've always been no matter what, whether it's sports or business, I've always looked to help.[00:20:00]
Someone else reach their goals. So my American dream, of course, you know, it's kinda like the, the concept of, you know, if you're on a plane and before you jump on a plane you know, while, while the the flight attendants saying, all right, if something happens. Make sure you put your mask on first and you take the action at first, so you can help people.
It's kind of the same concept, right? And the question of American dream is different for everybody and you're going to get different answers. You know, the way I look at it is first, you have to make sure that you are secure before you can help anybody else. You have to be secure yourself. Then once that's secure, you could, you could go and help anybody.
Right. So for me, I'm very fortunate that my virtual assistant company is a, it's a service business to where I could see the results that our team does for our clients. So everything that I've always done, it's been, it's kind of a give first. And then you get, and you help attain your [00:21:00] goals. A little bit of what we're doing here is my VA company we have, right
now, today. And this is just today. I don't know when this is going to air. We have over 500 virtual assistants right now in. What that means two our, all my videos are the Philippines. What that means to the families that we get to help out on a daily basis is incredible. We hear stories. We have a lot of we have a lot of testimonials from our virtual assistants in our support members over in the Philippines of, on what our company does for them and their family. That right there.
And I know that's not America. That is my American dream on being able to help those individuals and the trickle down effect is how does that really affect our clients and how does that help them reach their goals? So, for me personally, it's more of a, a service side on how I could give back and help everybody achieve their goals.
Because when that happens, that means that, you know, my internal goals are also met. [00:22:00] My family's goals are met as well.
Sean: It sounds like I don't want to interpret your answer, but it sounds like you're driven by value. Right? So it sounds like your, your goal is to drive value into your staff members. And then those, those individuals are able to, to be valuable to me in my business and so on.
Right. So if you can drive a value proposition for the people that work with you and the people that you serve. As am I, right? It sounds like you're kind of driven by
Bob Lachance: and I teach my kids this first. I teach my kids. You have to, you have to give before you get, because there's too many people in this world that are hungry.
Right. And you and I spoke about this a little bit. Before this call, a lot of people don't realize that you have, when you have a service business. You have to make sure that you take care of the product or the service first, you too many people focus on, well, how many, you know, how many sales do I have?
How many doors do I have right. In, in, in this space. Right? [00:23:00] How many doors do I have? Doesn't mean that you're operating those doors the correct way. I mean, there are so many individuals that are saying you know, I have X amount of doors, but when you actually peel back the layers and the onions, the, the, the the fulfillment behind
it is a little bit messy when I say a little bit, it's a lot messy, right? In my business, same thing. I look at a first, in a, on a fulfillment side, like what is my, what is my service offer? And I, I use my own service, so I'm very passionate and I could then offer it and say, this is how I am doing it. This is I'm successful in my own business.
And this is what I do. So I kind of look. You know, first on the service and fulfillment side, rather than on the sales side. I know a lot of people may, a lot of people don't do that, but that's what I do. And I, and it's been working.
Sean: Yeah, I think that's a much better long-term proposition for success, for sure.
It I it's, sometimes it's a struggle initially, [00:24:00] because you've got, you're competing against someone who's over overselling, the hype. Right. And they're under-delivering and just like you said, I think if you're driven by value and delivering value to your, your team members and to your clients, I think that's going to give you.
Long-term, it's going to give you a much healthier business and it's going to give you a much healthier success stories, and it's just a better feeling to, to be successful for people too. I think so I feel the same way in my business too, is that I, I want to make sure that I'm operating everything properly.
I don't care about how many doors or how much money it's it's it's, whatever, whatever I end up with is what I end up with, but I want to be successful with everything that I touch. So that's how.
Bob Lachance: Yeah, it's a long game. All the, all the other stuff comes right over time. It's the long game. It's I had a, a, I had a team call this morning and there was a quote from Michael Jordan and it was I've always believed that if you put in the work results will come, people don't see the work that you put in behind the scenes.
Right. Nobody sees that. It's kind of like, you know, when the, when the [00:25:00] camera's off, you know, people don't know what work really means. And you know, just like, you know, you're setting up, you know, you have a great operation, right? I would invest in the individual that has a great operation rather than someone who is out there in social media saying, look at me, look at me, look at me. Again,
I'm a little different, I'm just going to be transparent. I, I see things a little different because I've, I've experienced this stuff, you know, for the last 17 plus years on this side of it, whereas. You know, fulfillment is in my opinion. More important than the glitz and glamor over here. Right. It's a long game..
Sean: Right. Exactly. Yeah. For sure. And you know, I can tell you from a client side, that's, that's all that matters. You know, I just want, I just want my staff to be successful. So that's all that matters, you know? Well Bob let's how can people kind of reach out to you and find you, because I get this, I get this question a ton.
I don't know why, but I have a successful VA that works with me all the time. She does [00:26:00] a ton of stuff for us. And I talk about it, I guess enough, that people in my network are always like, where did you find her? How did you get this done? And so I have a lot of people, I know this is a, I know this is something that people crave and want in their business.
So how can people kind of find you and get that started if they want to do that,
Bob Lachance: Yeah, you can reach me directly and check out our website at revaglobal.com R E V A global.com. My direct email address is bob@revaglobal.com. Now we're on Facebook, Instagram all over the place. My direct email address is Bobbitt revoke global.com.
Sean: And they can go to your website really to kind of get some more information on how this kind of process works, what it kind of looks like and how it can benefit them and stuff like that. That'd probably be the best place to start really at revaglobal.com.
Bob Lachance: Absolutely.
Sean: Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this. There's a, this is kind of this, everybody knows VA's are out there and it's kind of this world that it's like, where do you get started? How do you get this going? People are always asking me about it for sure.
And so I appreciate you coming on kind of sharing it and, and and [00:27:00] being a resource for this.
Thank you very much.
Bob Lachance: I appreciate you having me. Thanks a lot, Sean..
Sean: We'll talk to you soon.
Bob Lachance: Thanks a lot.
Abigail: Thanks for joining us for another episode of next level American dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact the team directly or interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room.
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