Flipping America 568, Hiring a Virtual AssistantFlipping America

Opening:

I need help! And that’s been said about me on more than one occasion. But no, I need a Virtual Assistant! Perhaps you’ve heard of this, but if not, today is going to be eye-opening for you. You can hire assistants that live halfway around the world, do a great job and save you money at the same time. Today we are going to explore the world of Virtual Assistants.

Bob Lachance is a nationally recognized speaker, mentor, and trainer who specializes 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. A Bristol, CT native, Bob played ice hockey and went on to play at Boston University, playing a vital role in their 1995 National Championship. With only two classes left to graduate in his senior spring, Bob left school to pursue a professional hockey career where he played 4 years in the US and 4 years in Europe.

At 30 with his pro hockey career over, he educated himself in real estate and began his career in the trenches as a real estate investor. He acquired his first flip in 2004 and has done over 800 transactions since then. He has also started 2 very successful real estate coaching programs, 3 virtual assistant staffing companies, and much more.

Bob is the owner of REVA Global LLC which focuses on offering trained real estate virtual assistants to real estate professionals. Over the years he has experienced various setbacks where others would have simply thrown in the towel. Through the ups and downs both in business and life, his humble commitment to the daily process is something listeners can gravitate towards.

By utilizing the power of virtual assistants real estate professionals are able to leverage and scale their businesses. Investing in virtual assistants is a lifestyle change that increases business productivity. Not only do you gain back lost time but you have the opportunity to focus on the income-producing tasks that grow your business.

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News and Resources:

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Listener Questions:

Topic:

How can trained Virtual Assistants help you save time and grow your business?
What are the best tasks to offload to a Virtual Assistant when getting started?
How do you use Virtual Assistants in your real estate business that led you to over 150 deals last year?
What should I look for when hiring my first VA?
How are your Virtual Assistants managed?

revaglobal.com/flippingamerica

Quote of the Day

Michael Scott Quote

“You know what they say. Fool me once, strike one, but fool me twice…strike three.”

Expected Air Date: Wed 11/2/2022

Guest: Bob LaChance

Transcript

[0:00] I need help.
Perhaps you’ve heard of this but if not.
Today is going to be eye opening for you you can hire assistance that live halfway around the world do a great job and save you money at the same time,
On this episode of Flipping America.

[0:28] Music.

[0:42] The show that teaches you how to make money in real estate wherever you are, whatever your situation, there is an opportunity for you. And now, here’s that flipping America guy, Roger Blankenship.
Thank you Kathy Curtis and hello America.
Bob Lance is a nationally recognized speaker, mentor, and trainer who specializes in helping customers build their businesses through automation and outsourcing,
Bob currently owns four businesses and help start one of the nation’s largest real estate coaching programs.
He’s a Bristol Connecticut native and he played ice hockey and went on to play at Boston University playing a vital role in their 1995 national championship.
With only two classes left to graduate in the senior year Bob left school to pursue a career in professional hockey where he played 4 years in the US and 4 years in Europe.

[1:36] At the age of 30 with his
Pro hockey career in the rear view mirror he educated himself in real estate and began his career in the trenches as a real estate investor he acquired his first flip in 2004 and he’s done over 800 transactions since then
He’s also started two very successful real estate coaching programs three virtual assistant staffing companies and much more Bob is the owner of Areva Global LLC that’s R E V A
V as in
Virtual.
He’s experienced very setbacks where others would have simply thrown in the towel
Through the ups and downs boze in business and life his humble commitment to the daily process is something listeners can gravitate toward
By utilizing the power of virtual assistance real estate professionals are able to leverage and scale their businesses investing in virtual assistance is a lifestyle change that increases business productivity,
Not only do you gain back lost time but you had the opportunity to focus on the income producing tasks that grow your business.

[2:51] I really like Bob and I know that you’re really gonna like him too and he’s gonna join us in just a moment
On Facebook flipping America Facebook. Com
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If you have questions about real estate or real estate investing send them to questions at Flipping America. Net we answer every question we will answer yours even if we’ve answered that same question a 1000 times before
And maybe we have but we will answer it as if we’re answering it for the first time.
Because we love you and we wanna help you and that’s why we’re here,
Get a free newsletter by texting the word wit to 205.
Bob Lance welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I don’t know if you’ve been burning but we’ve already been talking about you here on the show leading up to this moment.
And man, it is so great to have you here but I gotta know.

[4:17] What hockey team did you play for?
Two more years. I played 4 years here in the US and 4 years in Europe. So, pretty good run. Pretty pretty fun. Well, lasted, but now you know, now I’m a working man.
Yeah. Well, kind of.

[4:44] I actually grew up in Bristol, Connecticut and I lived in Boston after that cuz I went to Boston University and stayed there because the city of Boston, phenomenal backyard in Connecticut though after
Okay alright well I didn’t tell you when we were talking before but my wife is from Boston.
Whereabouts? What about some Boston?
Okay.

[5:16] Yep at the age of 30,
And you you helped start one of the larger training companies across America and I’ve been off I’ve been overall this in my introduction prior to this but what led you to do this thing with virtual assistance,
Yeah it’s interesting so as you know cuz you own a very successful Rona very successful coaching program mentor program mastermind etcetera,
When I was working with students and in my own business,
When we’re busy and we’re doing, you know, 100 different things. There’s always stuff that falls by the wayside or tasks that you can’t stand doing or tasks that are not consistently done that that hurt your business,
So, I was looking start looking through the years working with many students. I started looking through the years saying, alright, there’s gotta be either a product or service that could that could help
Not only myself, but all other students within this program that I was running. And the coaching program I was running.
In 2013, I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. And it was very common in the real estate agent world but not any investment world.

[6:30] So I hired my first VA and we call him VA’s virtual assistant,
And a light bulb went on. I said, alright, I helped already help start a couple coaching programs. Why don’t I take the training and that whole concept and put it into the virtual assistant world,
And actually create a whole new industry of using the real estate investor side. So, that’s where the light label went on. Thinking like the true entrepreneur that you are, sir.

[6:55] Yeah, that’s good. Now, your first VA was this person American?
There are the Philippines and all my virtual assistant companies out of the Philippines as well. Okay, that’s interesting. All these reviews are out of the Philippines. Well, I think we tried some in South America and we’d we had pretty good results with them too but,
Alright so.
Yeah I actually had them building a buyer’s list I had a whole spreadsheet it was a little back then it was more on the XL side rather than a Google spreadsheet and it’s so they’re building buyers list they’re building a contractor list,
They’re billing private money lists. So, I had a building all these lists and also calling them and vetting them.
You know, see, hey, are you still buying? Are you still, you know, are your contractor in the area, etcetera, etcetera. So, that’s what I had them do first. Oh, that’s that’s good. And you just give me a couple of ideas.
I do not. I do not. I’ve I’ve gone away from courses at all. I used to I used to sell a short sale course actually on stage back in the day.
Tell us how the virtual assistants help you get that done.

[8:09] Yup. Very good question. And and that’s the one of things. You know, you and I didn’t get a chance to talk about it but I always say, listen, when when you’re looking at any type of service, you know, this is just me. I I always recommend talking to,
The owner to make sure that they’re using their service in their business and I think it’s very very important for us,
We use to text message to Cole call to follow up to do transaction coordinating so we do a bunch of different stuff but let’s hone in just on I guess lead generation.
Right cuz you you and I both know in his business.

[8:48] It’s kinda funny talk a lot of real estate agents so like there’s no product out here and I’m like well we have 150 properties right now in our contract there’s product out there you just have to actually go after it,
And have set up the correct systems to be able to actually.
Number one get the gauge of motivation and then what are you gonna do after you gauge a cereal motivation so RVs so the text messaging.
Call calling we also do direct mail in our real estate office,
But the main goal is we want we want the VAs to actually run through all of that data to gauge cellar motivation because let’s call what it is. I’m not gonna be text message all day long. I’m not gonna be cold calling all day long.
When I first started his business, I door knocked from 10 AM to 3 PM every Monday through Friday. Right now, calling is kinda the same.
Concept of the old door knocking back and you know 2000 4567.
Yeah but you can’t have a VA do your door knocking for you.

[9:49] You could. It’s mostly on getting it set up. So, what happens is I’ll I’ll tell you exactly what we do. So, we use props and let’s say, I’ll use prop stream as an example. Yeah. I have them, you know, pull list. I’ll let them know exactly what I want. They’ll pull the list.
They’ll also send it to the mail house and they’ll let them know, hey, listen, we want this to be a four, let’s say it’s a month campaign, so every Monday, when I’m dropped,
You know, this Monday, next Monday, Monday after Monday, Monday after.
And then when the phone rings they could take the phone calls as well to prescreen the sellers and see how serious there are after you know really motivated and they transferred over to our sales floor,
So you have VA’s that know how to do all of that.
Correct, correct. Hey, mom. Exactly how to do that. Through Riva, REVA. Com slash flipping America.

[10:34] Right through Riva you can provide these types of experience VAs to other real estate investors.

[10:41] Correct. Correct. Yes. So we are currently yep so yeah and obviously we have a we have a link set up with you as well. Which is really really cool. You and I have been known each other for a bit. So it’s really really cool. Getting on this getting on this podcast. I appreciate it.
So, we do is very important. We spend a lot of time on training our virtual assistants. Like, they go saying a little bit earlier.
What we’ve done is we’ve taken all the training from my past life and the education world moved it back over into,
Just a little example we’ve did 166 transactions last year and we’re set to do over I think we’re gonna be probably at about 220 ish transaction close on my real estate investment side so we do,
All ceiling we do some fix and flip,
We do whole tailing. So, that’s majority of the stuff we do. We’re actually buying or holding for a little while. We’re up to, I think about 27 doors,
And then the market was at its peak so we decided you know what? Let’s sell out. And sell all of our inventory. It’s also, it’s another business. So, for those of you who buy and hold,
We decided that we want to mainly focus on turning properties, turning properties, turning properties because our lead generation is not a problem. We’ve got,
I pull up my statistics right now.

[12:08] 74 120 etcetera. So these are all the leads each week that are coming into the office. So okay now what do you think,
Now you’re pulling this from like prop stream and have and and you’ve got a script that you’re you’re people are coal calling using mojo dial or something like that.
Correct.
At to gauge that and what do you call so what are you calling a lead?

[12:38] So, we call Leeds. So, so we can set up a records. Let’s just, I’ll give you the whole kinda.
What we do? So, Paul, AA list from prop stream. We’ll get him skip trace which means getting the,
Getting the the highest level of of having a phone number that matches that record,
So, we take all of that list. We upload it into our dialer. Let’s just say it’s mojo cells, right? Into that dialer and then we have our virtual assistance call, call, call. As soon as somebody answers the phone, we call that a connect.
So soon they connect and they talk to a potential.
Motivated seller. They go through the script from top to bottom and then as soon as somebody says, yes, I would love to talk to somebody else to learn more about what you have to offer and I would, yes, I would like to be interested in selling or accepting an offer.
That is when that turns into a lead. So, that’s a definition of a lead. So, they prescreen and take all the time. It’s kinda like, you know,
You’re looking through all of these individuals that want to raise their hand to say yes I mentioned in selling that’s what I want sent to my sales floor so that is considerably,
Pay some bills. We’ll be right back.

[13:50] Music.

[13:58] Hey, are you ready to learn this business for real.
It includes 25 home study courses inclusion at all weekend training events for life,
Group coaching calls for life and monthly one on one calls for a full year,
Invest in yourself and be a part of my flipping America family,
For life. Flipping America. Net forward slash mastermind. Okay, I’m here with Bob Lance from Riva REVA Reva Global and I think I miss the website
Little while ago. Is Riva Global. Com slash flipping America.

[14:39] And of course, the flipping Americas are referral link and if you use that link, then, there’s some consideration for yours truly, and so we appreciate you go in there. But now, okay, so there are a lot of things to do and you know,
You’ve got me you’ve got my juices flowing in the entrepreneurial spirit is going here and so when we finish the recording there’s something I wanna talk to you about to see if maybe we can put together a way of working together a little bit more.
Right now, if someone is thinking, yeah, maybe this sounds interesting to me. Maybe I need to hire a VA except I don’t really know what I would have them do. Yeah. What’s a good way for someone to think about hiring their first VA,
Obviously come to our website.

[15:21] Yeah, it’s a really good question. We have, you could actually come to our website and book a strategy session to go over that but here’s what I first, yeah, here’s what I first do. I would look just look at your calendar,
You know, pull your phone, look at your calendar, and you see what tasks you absolutely hate doing.
Because there are tasks that you look at and you’re like ah these are killing me. You also have to look at tasks that say what tasks are putting money in my pocket and what are and what’s think about this.

[15:49] Do you think
I would probably say they do not. I love text message all day long. I love this. I guarantee those are the the,
Tasks that are gonna be on that list. We do have a,
They don’t like taking calls from individuals that have problems all day long. So, RVA’s answer the phone and then what they’ll do is they’ll
Prescreen exactly what the challenges are if there’s a toilet then toilet needs to be fixed or or whatever’s wrong with it then they’ll
Call the contractor and they’ll take care of all that. I know me when I did 27 doors unlike this this for me. It was awful. I’m getting calls from
10 and some getting calls from water departments. We’re getting calls from everywhere saying, alright, here’s they’re all issues. So, great task for virtual assistants to do.
Call Collin text message property management anything you know transaction coordinating of a laundry list we have 100 tasks that we can give away too I think we have we we give them over to you on your site as well
Okay.
That’s great and you can go over and and anyone can schedule that free strategy call just by going to Revo Global. Com. Alright. So, that’s that’s very good and that’s helpful.
Now.

[17:10] And I don’t wanna get we never get into politics on this show but my former assistant and office manager.
And.

[17:22] He really shaved at the idea of me hiring.
And alright. So, I know what I ended up saying but how do you handle that when people say you should hire Americans to do this? And why don’t you hire Americans to do this?

[17:41] You know, we’re all on a worst small businesses, right? Real estate investors, real estate agents, real estate professionals, our small businesses, and we work on small margins. It’s always, we can make huge checks and we do make huge checks but guess what? Every single month, we look at our overhead.
And our overhead’s very very important. I’m gonna hire someone in Connecticut. Minimum wage is going up every single day.
In America. Let’s call it what it is. And if I’m gonna if I want someone who has a 4 year college degree which all of our virtual assistants in the Philippines
Add four-year college degrees but if I’m to hire somebody locally, it’s gonna cost me 6070, 8090, $1000 a year.
Or a virtual assistant is only gonna cost you 20 something $1000 a year.
For your college degree. So, I just look at it. You know, I’m an entrepreneur too. So, we all, every entrepreneur has to look at their overhead and I’d much rather, you know, if for me personally, it’s worked. And I’ve tested both.
But and again I hire individuals here too in the United States but when I’m talking about the tasks that I need to get done I consistent basis,
You know it’s hard enough to hire here I mean you’ve gone through that same thing you know yeah.

[18:52] Yeah.

[19:01] Nope that’s something that’s normal so in the Philippines a lot of people don’t understand this Philippines you know the customer service industry is huge,
And that’s exactly what we’re using our virtual assistance for and we pay them very well for you know what they make in their country. So, we pay them very, very well. We pay on time, actually pay ahead of time.
We offer a ton of benefits as well, health insurance, etcetera. So, there’s a lot of lot of very good things that we as a company offer our virtual assistants,
Oh, that that’s interesting. Alright, the website is Riva REVA Global.
Com slash flipping America of course Riva Global. Com slash flipping America and if you’re ready to branch out and if you need some help.
Get get over there right now and schedule a strategy call because Bob and his team are standing by to talk to you. Alright, we got 5 minutes left Bob. Here’s the ground rules. I’m gonna take it to the,
Their round table of random questions here flipping America and you got about 30 seconds to answer each one.
Okay. 12 questions. Here we go. Number one, how does the general economy affect your business?

[20:09] The real staple acid and two different ways. My virtual assistant company of course, we have real estate professionals but we also the medical industry side of things. So, we have two sides of it. We have a medical virtual assistant and a real estate virtual assistant,
So, the economy interest rates go up. Let’s call what it is. I look at it as there’s a lot of opportunity in the real estate investing world when interest rates go up because a lot of,
Individuals are out of the game and it makes more opportunity, more properties for us. I think that was 30 seconds.
Yeah, maybe a little bit longer but that’s okay. I’m getting all kinds of dings and notifications over here. So something must be happening but it will solve that later. In a few minutes. When you were a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

[20:51] I want to be a professional hockey player that’s what I wanna,
An hour I always look through his lens of having a lot of time off. He never missed any of my games. Coach us all the time. So. And that’s awesome.

[21:09] Congratulations on that. You know, this is show number 568 for flipping America and over the years, we’ve had probably at least 400 guests,
And only I think you’re only the second person who is who actually achieved what they wanted to do when they were a kid.
So
And if you’re not doing something related to your college degree that’s almost normal.
Hey alright.
From history it’s a very good question.

[21:54] You know what I would have to say someone like Steve Jobs I would have to go back as.
What number four what role does creativity play in your business?
That’s why people have partners cuz you’re, you know, everyone is are has whatever qualities they have. I think it’s very important to have somebody within your sphere that is creative. That could help with you. Yeah. So, if you’re not creative yourself,
Let’s go with it. Not every person’s creative but that’s why I really preach teams. I think everybody should have a team. Working by yourself. Me personally, I can’t stand doing it. I like when there’s more people, more team members because everybody could bring something to the table.

[22:44] Well I I I tell you this it is related to one of the questions coming up is,
I am a big believer in the fact that you can be a successful entrepreneur without creativity or passion.
I’m good. Yeah. Just find a find a proven path and follow it. Okay, what are the business are economic trends you watch most closely.
You know, right now, I’m obviously looking at interest rates, right? To see where the interest rates are going because,
You know, for turning properties, we wanna know where end buyers are and our end buyers, are they gonna get funded or not and what’s going on with the credit market because if,
Credit shrinks that means it hurts our end buyers. So, those are those are some of the things I look at on a daily basis. Alright.
Talk a little bit about the impact personal passion has on your life and business.
You gotta have a purpose in what you’re doing. If I’m gonna leave my, let’s say I’m gonna I work in a job that I’m not happy in and I wanna get in a real estate investing.
There’s gotta be a purpose of why I wanna do it. Is it you know, for more time, time freedom,
Passion creates energy, creates momentum. So, if you don’t have a purpose, it’s very difficult to do anything.

[24:06] Very good. Number seven, in your personal goal setting and planning how far ahead do you typically look.

[24:12] You know they just had a consultant coming to our company 2 weeks ago and we went through.

[24:22] Okay five say 5 years yeah 5 years you know you set a goal and then you back into it to see what what kind of goals you get from there yeah it’s interesting to me is I get a little older.
I’m not I’m not worried about the 5 or 10 year because in a couple years all the rest of the years are gonna look the same.
That’s right. That’s right. Alright. Number eight, if someone walked into your life and ask I wanna get started in real estate investing, what are the first three things I need to do.
I would say first call you,
No without ironics necessary to get educated. And this is totally different than me back and college cuz I,
You know, I didn’t take college. I took college for granted cuz I had a free scholarship to college and I didn’t, you know, I would love to go back and just reduce stuff like that but I would put a big emphasis right now on the education because,
There are you said it before. There’s proven plans on what creates successful real estate investors. How do that? I would also get a mentor and then join a mastermind. So those are the three things I would,
Okay, very good. Alright, number eight or nine, it understanding it is impossible to accommodate every person’s lifestyle and spending habits with this answer. What would you say is the minimum amount of money a person needs in order to retire.

[25:37] Whoo.
Man. I don’t know. It all depends. It all depends on what your lifestyle looks like. If I look at everyone’s different, you know, I’ll look at everyone’s different. Depends where you live because I live in Connecticut and,
The taxes property taxes here are through the roof but if I live, you know, maybe in in Florida, proper taxes are lower on first look at where I where I need to live and I would run the numbers. That’s the okay.
Hey Facebook I’m money away in real estate and I bought X amount of properties. Will that give me enough positive cash flow to do whatever I want. So if I if I need $10 thousand a month
A positive cash flow then I’ll build a plan to be able to get that. So it all depends on
All of those factors like taxes, you know, cost of living everything. So, that’s that’s I mean, tough answer, great, great question. Tell answer and answer. Oh, it’s almost impossible to answer. That’s why I give the caveat to do.
The beginning of it. Alright, number 10. If you are picking someone who is alive today to model your business after who did it.

[26:37] So if I look at my virtual assistant company I’ll just take a real estate investing I probably model it after.
There’s some pretty big hitters. I’m in a in a mastermind. There’s some pretty big pretty big hitters. It probably say guy like.
Guys Stuart from New Western guy another individual that owns property force as well I’d say you look at companies like that cuz they’re turning,
You know, a 1000 plus transactions a year. So, I would look at guys like that. I’ll Oliver Silers, one of them that I would I would definitely put up top of that list.

[27:14] How do you start is number 11 how do you start each day versus how do you wish you started each day.

[27:22] How do I start each day I start each day by actually,
Sometimes some people say this is a bad habit but I start I go through all of my emails cuz I wanna look at all the stuff that’s junk as I get so much so many the junk emails. Yeah. And I also look at my calendar,
I exactly what I need to do that day. So that’s how I start. How I should start is getting a little exercise. That’s how I should start.
I do some exercise during the day but maybe starting the day by maybe jumping on a bike or you know going for a little run is probably probably the best thing I should do.
Okay. Alright. Number 12. And this is it.

[28:08] Money. I think, you know, you look at, you look at health number one because if you’re not healthy,
That really and you can’t do much. Sorry to do health.
Take an been all the payer bills and and going out to going out to dinner not worrying about what things cost
I know those are very simple but I think that’s like I think that is wealth. That’s beautiful. And you have completed the round table of random questions. Thank you. Appreciate that. Alright. Now,
We’ve been talking about virtual assistance VA’s and the website is Riva R E V A.

[28:46] Real estate virtual assistant I just got that Riva Global. Com,
And of course i would encourage you to put slash flipping America at the end of it leave a global. Com slash flipping America Bob Lance has been our guest Bob it’s been great we’ve got a lot more to talk about but we’re out of time for today.

[29:06] And that is all the time we have for the day. You hear the music played in the background. So, we’ve got to end with our quote of the day and we’re in the Michael Scott quote series. Here’s the quote for today.

[29:16] You know what they say fool me once strike one but fool me twice strike three.

[29:23] That’s Michael Scott from the office played by Stephen Carroll and i am Roger Blankenship the host of Flipping America and I’m glad that you joined us for this little time,
And here’s what I always say.

[29:37] You’ve been listening to flipping America real estate investing for everyone. Listen three times a week on stations across the country or on the flipping America app free in the app store,
Be sure to like us on Facebook find and follow us on Twitter and Instagram and keep your eyes open.

[29:54] Music.

Flipping America

Flipping America 568, Hiring a Virtual Assistant