Establishing a Strong Team Culture Among Many Languages and Cultures

Industry veterans Bob Lachance and Sharad Mehta discussed team culture—particularly with relation to remote virtual assistants—on a recent REsimpli Podcast edition.

Vision guides groups toward quality. Bob and Sharad stress the need to help the company direction, vision, and goals. Those who use these basic concepts will assist the team to be cooperative and targeted. This harmony guarantees common team goals across many languages and cultures.

Remote teams have to collaborate. One expects consistent, thorough correspondence for all the work to be done coherently and progressively. With online platforms such as – Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom, chats never end. To handle time zone issues and increase involvement, Bob and Sharad propose weekly meetings, mailings, or updates. Good communication binds and guides the entire team.

Respect varies in the cultures of many employees. Bob and Sharad want to raise cultural knowledge so they could strengthen their bonds. Good presentation of cultural beliefs and customs increases acceptability in the workplace. Different educational strategies might help to create harmony in the workplace.

Online team building may mix groups. Bob and Sharad think united activities increase team spirit particularly among dispersed workers. If team members are to continue being engaged, they need compliments. For exceptional success Bob and Sharad advise shout-outs, praises, or little presents.

Policies with many of applications in motivating collective projects Bob and Sharad work on different religious holidays and in different time zones. These constraints show how the business values diversity, therefore enhancing its dynamism and inclusivity. To Bob and Sharad, team work and problem-solving appeal greatly. Thought-provoking comments inspire friends and help one to overcome challenges.

Bob and Sharad discuss how team development may be supported by open office hours, check-ins, and leader accessibility. Part-time participants abound among leaders. Bob offers VA recruitment and sourcing; training; placement; Good management and standards help VA and business objectives to be higher.

Bob and Sharad know the VA incentive policies. Bob pays VAs for performance, thereby maintaining VAs. Good incentives may raise production and improve the quality of the surroundings. Bob lectures about consistency and marketing. While political advertising evolves, success demands perseverance. From his standpoint, turning leads into sales largely depends on effort, sales training, and development. Bob discusses his favorite book, Darren Hardy’s “The Compound Effect.”

Listeners might investigate these concepts via Bob Lachance’s email and website.

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Transcript:

Sharad Mehta  0:57  

Cool. All right, let’s go.

Bob Lachance  0:58  

All right, all right, let

Sharad Mehta  1:00  

me just make sure it’s recording, yep. All right, let’s go phone, switch talk, perfect. Hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing your super special guest, Bob, the chance on this podcast. Bob, welcome to REsimpli podcast. How are you?

Bob Lachance  1:18  

Yeah, very good. Very good. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it absolutely,

Sharad Mehta  1:21  

man. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I know you’re super busy so much stuff going on. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you live, and how are you related to this crazy world of real estate?

Bob Lachance  1:34  

Yeah, I live in West Hartford, Connecticut. Started real estate back in when was it? We’re going way back. Now, 2004 prior to that, I played professional hockey for decades. Yeah, two decades. So as you can tell, I shaved my beard a little bit today. So I usually have these two white spots over there in my my gray beard. But I just turned 50 this year, so been around for a while, and I got a lot of bumps and bruises to to show for. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  2:00  

cool man, like you. You have, you have one of the largest the VA agency for real estate investors. So we definitely want to get into that. So I want to speak a little bit about your two decades of real estate investing by the congratulation turning 50 men, you look absolutely amazing. Look like you when I’m 50, yeah. So how did you get started, like, you know, was it infomercial that got you in real estate? Was it your book you’d read? Or you kind of, you know, you were tied off your job, or you were actually a professional hockey player? So how did the transition happen? Well,

Bob Lachance  2:37  

it started earlier than that. I went to school for four years and and right before getting my degree, I was offered a contract to play ice hockey, so I left two classes sure to get my degree. And you know, with the thought and mindset that, hey, every summer I’m going to go back and finish my degree. And so you keep going each year in between contracts, I never went back. I never went back before. You know, it’s eight years has gone by, and I either had a decision, either go back to school or jump into an industry that did not need any type of licensing or degrees or anything. And started reading a couple of books towards the end of my career. And, you know, everything pointed to real estate. Again, I didn’t want to go back to school. So real estate, was it,

Sharad Mehta  3:22  

yeah, and then did you like, start with flipping or wholesaling? Yeah? Actually, my

Bob Lachance  3:28  

first deal was a flip. So I bought this course, I think, with gentleman’s name was David wiznit. He was an attorney investor, and, you know, taught me how to farm areas and, you know, network and build buyers lists. And so anyway, at that time, I thought I was a rehabber, so drove around neighborhoods, made offers on properties. There’s one property that was actually listed, and it’s listed for 185 grand, and put an offer in 145 they accepted it. And I was like, Oh, what do I do now? Because I didn’t have money lined up. I didn’t have I didn’t understand business. I didn’t know anything. So no contractors, nothing. So anyway, I figured it out, grabbed the newspaper back in the day, and yeah, looked up contractors, and I called three of them. Only one of them showed up to meet me at the property that it just bought. And so I hired that guy. And yeah, I just started from there, and then, you know, this crazy world of real estate has taken me in all different directions, from, you know, commercial to buy and hold, to wholesaling to flipping to you name it.

Sharad Mehta  4:32  

Yeah, that’s like one in three contractors. That’s actually pretty good odds. You know those. I mean, if I can get one out of 10 people to show up in contractors, you know that that’s a big win. So you’re flipping houses, you’re doing commercial, you’re doing all sorts of different thing. And I want to get into like, how did Riva global come about? Like, what, how did that transition Are you still you’re still doing real estate. But how did like. Did you see a need for Rebug global?

Bob Lachance  5:02  

That’s pretty interesting. So like I said, I started 2004 right after I did my first flip. I jumped into short sales with the idea of getting more rehab projects. But, you know, once it started doing short sales, we started getting into data. We were flipping them at that time. So it’s real different. We used to use Land Trust, but Land Trust, put the property into a land trust, and sell the beneficial interest of that land trust, and the end buyers funding would fund us out so and then in oh seven or oh 809, that stopped. We couldn’t do that any longer. However, let me take a step back. Well, as in the short sale world, I also helped run a real estate education company in the back end of the coaching side. This is back in probably oh six at the time, and then in oh seven, we got approached by good buddies of ours from Fortune Builders. And they said, Hey guys, you know, we don’t know anything about the coaching space. My buddy or my partner at the time was Pat Precourt, so we jumped in the real estate education space at while investing, because we were all friends in Connecticut before they moved out to San Diego. This is again, back in 2007 so before you know it, you know, the company started picking up some steam, and my job was to help build the coaching program behind it, hire coaches, train them, manage them, etc. And, you know, run coaching calls and run webinars, things like that. And this is oh 70809, even when you know the crash hit. But all throughout the years, always looking for if there’s a service or a product out there to help the students actually follow through with the homework assignments or action items I would give them. So picture this. You know, this in the coaching space we would have, I get on a coaching call. Let’s say I’ve had five coaching calls in one day, and they’re 30 minutes in length, and I’d be walking through what an investor needs to do to be successful. We had homework assignments. I found a common theme of the week, or the next week, I’d get on a call, and majority of those individuals didn’t have time to do the tasks that I that I he they needed you to be successful. There’s a lot of Morgan part time, full time, etc. And from 2007 to 2013 I was looking for that product or service. And then 2013 I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. So I’m like, Hmm, this could be something. So I hired my own. I like testing things before I actually implement them or tell someone that it’s the best product. Because I, you know, you know that in the referral side, yeah, for 100% Yep. So light bulb went on. Anyway, 2013 when I hired one. I’m like, You know what? This could be a business. This could be exactly what we’re looking for. So 2014 I partnered up with a guy, and then, yeah, we just launched it. We had a two year test, and then lo and behold, you know, we were at a couple 100 users, and the industry was saying, yes, it is a needed or service out there. So it’s pretty cool. Start, 2014 and then, you know, fast forward, it’s growing from there,

Sharad Mehta  8:04  

how many vs you have now? So

Bob Lachance  8:07  

we have, as of right now, we have over 1000 VAs right now, but the companies are getting separated, so it’s going pretty good. It’s going and

Sharad Mehta  8:16  

it’s not just real estate, right? You guys do medical billing also Correct, correct, yeah, okay. But is it primarily real estate? I mean, the name Rebug, it’s 5050 now, 5050 but they’re all under Rebug global. Correct, yeah. And all everything in Philippines, or you have some in every everything’s in the Philippines, right? Yeah, that’s amazing, man. So you noticed this, so did you? Were you always looking for an opportunity for yourself to start a service company, or you were just looking for a service company, service provider that you can plug into, that can help the students do the homework that they were given? Yeah,

Bob Lachance  8:55  

I wasn’t looking to start a new company because I was also flipping properties and running this coaching program with, obviously, our partners. I was not looking for another company to start. It just happened, you know, light bulb went on. Like, you know what this could be? There’s nothing out there. It was very prevalent in more in the real estate agent space, but not in our space, with the real estate investor space. So I’m like, You know what? Might as well, you know, marry the two together. I helped start this education training company. You might as well, you know, put the virtual assistant world together and start training virtual assistants, and then that’s how kind of it got started.

Sharad Mehta  9:31  

What is it that you notice investor that are successful using VAs versus the ones that are not like what? What difference do you notice between those two groups of investors.

Bob Lachance  9:42  

They treat them like they’re part of their team. I think it’s very, very important, because, you know, at the beginning, a lot of people like, oh, virtual assistants. They’re just cheap. They’re, you know, they’re, you could throw them away. They’re not human. Well, you know, this was before covid, and then now it’s, it’s actually got a. Lot easier, because since covid, people understand that remote work is a something that is a, you know, I can’t say it’s a fat anymore, right? Because now it’s something where people, a lot of people, especially younger generation, they want kind of a hybrid work from home, slash, you know, in office. So now we have investors, agents, brokers, etc, real estate professionals now see the the virtual space as a normal thing. Now, yeah,

Sharad Mehta  10:27  

I mean, I think people don’t realize, like, VA is a virtual assistant just because they’re in Philippines or us. I mean, people have that. It’s funny. Sometimes I’ll talk to investors and I’ll say, hey, looking for a VA, and like, yes, and I’ll say, Okay, what about you know, have you thought about hiring someone in us? They’re like, No, I’m looking for a VA. A va could be in us. It’s someone who’s virtually helping you. It just people have this idea that you know that a VA means inexpensive help that they’re getting, and it’s so true, they don’t value it enough. Like, I have a I have a VA in Philippines, and he’s absolutely incredible. Like, he basically runs my business, and I give him pretty good incentive for someone in Philippines, and it’s amazing how much initiative they will take. At least, I’ve noticed, like, people in Philippines, they are really good, amazing work ethics that they have, and you give them the right incentive, you put them in the right structure, and they absolutely will stay with you forever. Is that something you’ve noticed on your own side? Yeah,

Bob Lachance  11:30  

the culture there is incredible, very family oriented, very service oriented. So they’re looking they they look at your business like their business, just like you said. They take a lot of pride into making sure that, you know, everyone’s successful together. So you give right incentive programs. You treat them like part of your family, which is your company family, and you will get the best out of Philippine, you know, virtual assistants, right?

Sharad Mehta  11:56  

And then the investors that are starting out like, what do you think? What’s the first thing that they need help with? Like, someone who’s just kind of starting out on their own, like doing a deal here and there, and they want to start out with hiring a VA,

Bob Lachance  12:10  

I would say lead generation, because, you know, you start looking. I’ve been, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time, and I’ve, you know, always looked at your platform around the stuff that you continue to add, this is what helps separate you from every you know, everyone else, in my opinion, now you start looking at a virtual assistant if you start using them in lead generation, because we, you know, you and I talked about this before, you’re going to have a tough time in any business if you don’t have leads. Yeah. So

Sharad Mehta  12:37  

it is a marketing business. When you think about real estate, it is a marketing business. You stop doing marketing, you are out of business. Yep.

Bob Lachance  12:44  

So I would start marketing and branding up front, because, you know, there’s things that we do. We do this podcast. Guess where this podcast goes? It’s sent to my virtual assistants, and they chop it up and they send it on all of, you know, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They put it all over the place. And I don’t do any of it, but that’s part of the branding side. And then on the marketing side, we have virtual assistants that go direct to seller. We either do, you know, cold calling, text messaging, handle direct mail, pulling lists for us, getting them skip traced. So they do all of those things up front to where the only I want in our team in so we have a an office in Cheshire, Connecticut. All the leads get driven into that office, and as soon, just like for instance, they’ll use, you know, your software, and all of a sudden they’ll go in, it’ll ding, and then our acquisition individual will be calling, right? They’ll be calling, following up right after that warm lead came into the system, right? And

Sharad Mehta  13:41  

do you think like when someone is looking for a VA, is it fair to expect a VA to do lead gen, lead management, disposition and then admin work? Is that? Is that fair to expect that from a VA? They

Bob Lachance  13:58  

can but the you have to separate it. Not everyone’s good at everything. It’s kind of like, if you, if you hire an acquisition person, but they’re not good at dispo here, right? Or they can’t do TC, or they can’t do admin. Everyone’s got different makeups. So keep that in mind. I would put them in a seat to just like, just like here, if you’re hiring an American. For me, this is what I found in our office. We’ve, you know, we continue to hire every single day in house. So we’ve found that not necessarily as a great acquisition individual, a great dispo person. So it’s the same with virtual assistants.

Sharad Mehta  14:31  

Right when you when you see someone hiring a VA directly like what are some of the mistakes they make in hiding is that they don’t look for the right skill set. They just go based on the price, or, you know, you would, just because they think it’s, you know, someone that I’m paying less than 10 bucks an hour. They don’t take it as seriously.

Bob Lachance  14:56  

Yeah, a lot of times they do just look at price, and they hire price. Yes, you know, I always use this example, the first, the first door I got in one of my houses, my first like house in West Hartford, I did a rehab and I put a cheap door in the back. And in Connecticut, it gets really cold, and my oil bill that that winter went through the roof. And I’m like, hey, you know, I only spent 99 bucks on that door after that winter. I’m like, I am never going to, I’m never going to shop for price like that, because you gotta go for quality as well. It’s those two things. I’m also, you know, in State of Connecticut, our minimum wage went up to $15 and I think it’s 69 cents right now. Now, I don’t know about you, but if you know many of these states, if you’re hiring someone for minimum wage, you’re not going to get someone’s college educated. They haven’t gone to school for four years. You’re just not going to get the quality that you need to run, you know, to run whatever task you need to do in all of our virtual assistant stuff for your college degrees.

Sharad Mehta  15:59  

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I live in California, it’s like cost of living is so high. So imagine if you’re hiring someone for 1520, even 25 bucks an hour, like, you know, what kind of candidate you’re gonna get, you know, no knock on the candidate. But if they have all these expenses that they need to pay for, you know, 20, you know, 1520 bucks an hour doesn’t go very far. And then you can get, yeah, they can, and you can, you can hire someone overseas, you know, for like, fraction of that, of that cost, and they have, like, four years of education. Like, you can really have some absolutely amazing people like, you know, I’d be simply rebuilt like a multi million dollar company, and then it’s just me and two other people in us, our affiliate manager and my assistant. My assistant isn’t even full time, and everyone else is overseas. And just we’ve been able to really leverage working virtually, you know, having a remote culture, and then just be able to, like, work off of that. I want to ask you one thing, this is something I’m still struggling with, and I haven’t figured out a way to come up with the solution for this. Like, how do you how do you build a culture across, you know, a team culture across. You know, people speaking different languages, different cultures. Like, how do you do that? Is that something that’s possible? And then the teams that investors, that you are supporting through vivac Global. And then the ones that are really successful, like, what is it that they’re doing that helps them build a really good company culture?

Bob Lachance  17:28  

Yeah, you know, one thing I’ve noticed is especially business wise, right? If you include them and you have it’s, it’s almost going, you know, looking back and saying, all right, you need, we all, no matter what we do in our businesses, we need to make sure that there’s structure place, because people do not work well when there’s not structure. So for us, you know, for me, I have everything done in the morning. So my my virtual assistant business is done in the morning. I have all my meetings because they’re in the Philippines, but they work Eastern Standard Time or whatever, obviously whatever, whatever time zone you’re in. We have PST, a lot of PST clients as well. But for me, personally, I’m an east coast so I have everything from 8am to 10am all my virtual assistant meetings. So every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I keep Friday off. So for me, I keep that rhythm going. And so the way we have everything structured, we have a, what we call a client service manager that oversees about 25 to 30 client pairs. And they have all of their check ins. They have all their, you know, start a day reports and a day reports, daily check ins as well. So everything is very, very structured. For that’s just for Riva global, but for I have about 20, around 20 virtual assistants doing a various stuff for my real estate company. And what we do is we have same thing. We have the same structured calls. We have same structured meetings. We got started the reports, end of day reports. But everything is very, structured, and we make them feel like they’re part of the family as well, which is really, really important. How

Sharad Mehta  19:07  

do you celebrate like wins with them? You know, for example, if you have someone in us, you could get together with them. You could do some of those, like, in person things. How do you get like give you some company events that are virtual and involve your virtual team also in that,

Bob Lachance  19:23  

yeah, we do that. We do company virtual events like, yeah, we do a cool thing at Halloween. We do it. I don’t know if you know this, but we do. I fly in there about three times a year. So we do meet with our support staff two to three times a year, and then we have a big event at the end of the year with, you know, almost 1000 of our VAs that come in and support members that also come in for one big party, just to give back and to, you know, to obviously celebrate everything. We have awards and things like that as well.

Sharad Mehta  19:53  

So when you, when you fly to Philippines, you have every, everyone from your team, all, like 1000 VAs you. Come in, or

Bob Lachance  20:00  

we invite them for, yeah, that’s one time a year. But the other, yeah, the other number, the other two other times, we have support events, you know, trainings and support events, and, you know, team building, etc. And

Sharad Mehta  20:12  

you do that in Manila, have everyone fly in Manila, or you go to some other island, yeah, mainly

Bob Lachance  20:16  

we go there. Sometimes we go to some islands, but mainly it’s, it’s, you know, concentrate in that area, because there’s a lot of VAs that are in that area.

Sharad Mehta  20:23  

Got it? Got, yeah, I flew out to Philippines for the first time in in February. We have like, about a dozen people there, and we went to borai. It was, like, it was amazing. Like, once you meet them in person, and it’s really, I mean, it’s like meeting them in person, like, just, just like my regular team. They just happen to be in Philippines, but they’re just like my regular team members that I have, like, I, you know, for my other businesses, employees in the US, it’s just like, if you treat them the same way, it’s amazing how much value, how much output you can get from people anywhere in the world, especially with, like, in the day and age that we’re living in covid, it’s just, it’s like, you want that remote team culture, and then you want people to feel like they can work from anywhere, like we just tell our team, you can work from anywhere, as long as you produce. That’s that’s the only economy. Doesn’t matter. You know, as long as the internet connection, you can work from anywhere, but you just have to produce. Yeah,

Bob Lachance  21:19  

and it’s always good. Like you said, I’m glad you actually went there, because Brock is Brock is, is actually a really nice place. We were there last year as well. But getting together and showing, you know, face to face human contact, I think, is really, really important. It’s no different if you’re working in the Philippines, or you’re working, you know, if I have partners that are in California near you, right? Even though we’re, you know, we’re six, seven hours away flight. It’s the same exact thing. And, you know, you and I would probably have, if we were partners, we would have some, you know, get togethers during the year. How,

Sharad Mehta  21:49  

at what point would you say, if, like, how many VAs would someone need to have before they like, okay, you know, it just, I should go invest in traveling to Philippines meeting them. Like, is there a certain number of vs? Do you say like, once they get to that number, I would say 10 plus 10 plus Yeah, yeah. Okay. And with the vs that you guys are working like, when you hire them, what sort of like, how do you make sure you find the best people? Do you like? What? What are some best practices? Are you having them take some, you know, disk analysis or predictive index, like, Would you do

Bob Lachance  22:25  

both? We do both. Do both. Yeah, we have a whole, I mean, we have a whole sourcing and recruiting team over there. We’re going through, probably, I don’t know, well, over 1000 applications per month. Um, that’s one of the reasons why I started the company too. Is my pain, along with obviously, was a need. But when I tried to hire my first virtual assistant that went to the, you know, one of those sites like Upwork or whatever, I can’t remember it was it called Upwork back in the day, or no, they

Sharad Mehta  22:51  

changed freelance or something. I Yeah, it wasn’t Upwork, yeah, yeah. But I

Bob Lachance  22:56  

went through over 100 applications, literally going through them, and probably 20 plus hours of going through this and interviewing, and I had my first VA for, you know, couple weeks, and then all of a sudden, I couldn’t find them anymore, so I had to go through the same process. I’m like, There’s got to be a better, you know, the better way out there. So that’s one reason why I created our we have our sourcing and recruiting team, then it goes to our training team, placements team, and that’s why we have it all built out with our operations and HR and things like that.

Sharad Mehta  23:24  

Did you see you guys like 1000 candidates a month? Yep,

Bob Lachance  23:29  

yeah, wow. Let me rephrase, 1000 resumes, 2000 resumes,

Sharad Mehta  23:33  

yeah, to get to, yeah, that’s, that’s insane. Yeah. No, what? Where was I going to go with that? Yeah, one thing that I’ve noticed in our business is like, we, you know, initially, when we used to hire someone, it was always about the price, like, pay them the minimum. That was, I mean, Upwork. Had to actually increase the limit to $3.33 like, you know, couple of years ago, and then that’s what, like, we would hire it. But now we start saying, Okay, let’s just pay a little bit more. And it’s incredible how long you can get somebody to stay with you, and how much they appreciate being part of that team. And then one thing I’ve noticed in my experiences, like, at least the team in Filipino, at least the team that we have, they’re so driven by incentives, and it’s just, if you can align those incentive, their incentives, with the company, incentives, it’s amazing. How much like motivation, how much like really amazing work that you can get with them. Have you noticed something like, is that something you guys have also noticed working with VAs in Philippines? And then, do you provide incentives, or do you leave that up to the client to like, provide those incentives? And is there any limit on that? See

Bob Lachance  24:46  

when there’s when I look at incentives. I look at so when you have a one on one VA with our company, you figure out your incentive bonuses with them. When that when I have virtual assistants my own real estate company, so we did last three. Is redid over. I think it’s about 300 deals right this year. I think we’re on Mark to do over 180 85 depending on, you know, how much gets closed by the end of the year. But with our virtual assistants, we have incentives for each one, so if they’re, you know, text message, team, cold call, team, direct mail, etc. So we have different incentives for each one of them as well. So once the deal closes, they get incentives, so, like you said, which keeps them very, very motivated and task driven and focused. Yeah, and

Sharad Mehta  25:29  

then you have, like, you’re working with, you know, work with, like, 1000s of investors all over the country, and you get to, like, a really good insight into what different investors are doing. What do you see that’s working for investors right now? Like, given, you know, and we’re like, August 2024 texting is getting a little bit harder. Cold calling is not as you know, effective, you know, as it used to be. Like, what’s working for the investors that you guys are working with? It’s

Bob Lachance  25:57  

really a mix of all of them together to be 100% transparent. So, you know, you you know that’s going back and being this business for a long time you have, it’s the consistency that actually creates success in this business. So we continue to do each one of them right. So you got direct mail, you have, you know, you have online lead generation, direct mail, cold calling, text messaging. We do a little PPC, a little ppl, so we try everything. We’re going to get to TV after the election as well, which is more, you know, obviously more expensive. But from what I’ve heard, I did, I did TV back in 2000 I think it was 2006 back in the day. I did it back then. I have not done it since, but we have obviously a lot of investor buddies that swear by and say it does very, very well. So we’re going to do that as a second test. But the point of the matter it’s consistency. So we focus mainly on cold call, text, direct mail and some online lead generation right now.

Sharad Mehta  26:55  

Yeah, I’ve heard from some of the investors that with TV ads. It’s hard to attribute the leads to TV because sometimes what happens if you do TV ads and people actually go to your website, fill out the form, so all of a sudden, as you start doing TV ads, you notice a spike in your website activity. But it’s hard to like attribute that money came from TV. But you can clearly see as you start doing TV or radio, then your, you know, lead volume starts going up from website. And it’s interesting that you mentioned that with the election year, I’ve heard from other investors kind of taking a pause from TV radio, given that it’s election year, some people also kind of cutting back on Facebook ads and stuff, just because you’re being election year. So it’s interesting that you’ve noticed that also on your side, where do you see the market going from here, like, you know, next, given this election year, next and the interest rates are starting to come down a little bit, what do you see, you know, happening in next, like, 12 to 18 months from here?

Bob Lachance  27:57  

I mean, I still think it’s going to be a very good market. We have a lack of inventory out there, you know, there’s more, there’s more buyers and sellers out there, which is, you know, which obviously keeps the prices where they’re at. You know, I don’t see us going into, you know, things going back the way they used to back in, yeah, oh 809, 10. I honestly, between me and you and everyone on this call, I would love for them to go back down to those prices, because I’m going to position, I’m going to position, to gobble up a lot of them, but unfortunately, they won’t. So we just got to, you know, we got to go to, but to answer your question, I don’t think it’s going to, it’s not going to, you know, it’s not going to crash,

Sharad Mehta  28:39  

yeah, and, and, I think it’s also what we notice with our investors. The ones that are the most successful are the ones that are most consistent. When people come to us and say, what marketing channel should start with, our answer always the one that you can stick with the longest. At the end of the day, every marketing channel works, but it’s just the one that you can stick with the longest is the one that’s going to give you the best route, whether it’s cold calling texting, direct mail, PPC, ppl, whatever it might be, we notice people get leads from all sorts of crazy things. It’s because they stick with it long enough to let that marketing channel work. It’s the investors that I’m sure you get, these kind of investors all the time, that hire, you know, a va from Reva global, and they use them for a month to do cold calling. They don’t get any deal close. They’re like, Oh, this thing doesn’t work. And then I’m going to do something else. I’m going to do it on your on my own. And then they do direct mail, one mail drop, then nothing comes. And they’re like, Okay, direct mail doesn’t work. Then they do texting, they do PPC, and they just keep jumping from one marketing channel to the next, but actually nothing ever you know comes through because they’re not sticking with it consistent enough. So 100% agree with you on the consistency part of in the marketing.

Bob Lachance  29:51  

Let me, let me add to that, because I think that’s really important part. And I was actually laughing. I was chuckling with someone the other day, and I said, you know. But if everyone looks at their business and they and they actually invest in the sales process and how to close a deal, the all of those leads that you just said would be able to turn into a contract, because our sales skills will be better. You know, you look at, you look at if two individuals, one individual that has sales training and consistently gets trained on sales right? There’s a lot of great sales trainers out there, and then another individual that does not do that, I will promise you the we will send each of them the same lead, but the one that has sales training, I will promise you, will close, you know, nine times out of 10 compared to one out of 10. So I think that’s a very missing link in our industry. It’s that a lot of times I hear people say, Oh, the leads aren’t good. The leads aren’t good. And then I ask, What have you done for sales training? And they look at me with a blank stare, and I’m like, well, that’s why, if I didn’t, you know, if we didn’t train our individuals in our own office on how to close those leads, all of the leads set to my office would be coined bad leads, yeah, but they’re very good at closing, and we invest on training. So

Sharad Mehta  31:15  

yeah, I think people, I think investors, have that certain idea that if I’m spending money on leads, and I’m getting these leads, then they’re going to convert automatically. I just have to make an offer, and they’re just going to convert. They don’t, they don’t understand the concept of follow up, like using, you know, showing empathy, using the right skill sales script, you know, the script to talk to people asking the right question, and, you know, making sure if they give an answer, rather than just going through a list of questions you want to ask, if someone just said, oh, you know, I don’t want to sell right now because my dog just died or had this, you know, tragedy in family. And you just, like, completely close, gloss over that, and then you go and ask the next question, okay, when can I come look at the property? Like, why would anybody want to sell you when you just didn’t even take a moment and say, Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that anything I can help you with, it’s just such a simple thing. And then I tell people all the time, like, the best thing you can do is go back and listen to your sales call that you did. You know in the moment, you may not realize it, but when you go back and listen to it like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe I just completely missed this super important part of the information where the you know, the seller gave me this information, you know, about a bankruptcy devoted whatever it might be, and you just, like, completely didn’t even pay attention to that. It’s You’re so right? I mean, people just don’t invest enough in the business when it comes to sales training. Have this expectation that, oh, if I’m spending $1,000 in marketing, I should be making, you know, $5,000 I should have my first contract in one month or two months, but it never happens like that. So people that are consistent day in day out are the ones that are actually crushing it.

Bob Lachance  32:50  

Yep, in any sense important. And this is something that I want to make sure we don’t gloss over you. We all have X amount of leads in our system. That’s why you have a CRM like Ari, simply, right? You need to keep and house those leads somewhere to where you could do SMS follow up, you could do calling follow up, you could pick up the phone. You have a built in dialer. The point is, is that we close majority of our deals just and this is another kind of red flag. You got to be a careful if you hire someone and they are just cherry picking and only going after the new deals. If you don’t go after that the deals or the leads and follow up, you will be missing out on probably 7080, 90. Oh, your revenue.

Sharad Mehta  33:32  

Yeah. I just literally, we’re just closing on the sell side of a deal today that was in our acquisition. Follow for 400 days. And I kid you not, I’m gonna make about 75 to 80,000 net to me on that deal, just from follow up. When you do anything fancy, there was like, no magic word, no magic question. We asked them. We just stayed consistent every month, every other month we would follow up. Hey, you know, we’re still looking to buy if anything changes, let us know. We would use different variations of this, but it was essentially the same thing we were saying, Hey, do you are you still looking to, you know, has anything changed? And we would change our questions and call based on the previous information that given us. But it’s just, it’s honestly that simple as that, like consistently following up, doing marketing, having the same, you know, consistent sales training that you’re forming. It’s just, it’s amazing how much difference it can make in your business. So 100% agree with you on that, yeah.

Bob Lachance  34:27  

And nobody knows what’s going on someone else’s life, yeah, nobody knows when changes. Someone could be getting a little older, someone, you know, some kind of happen at work. Someone could have, you know, moved out of state, etc. I mean, I live in Connecticut, and there’s a lot of people that want to get out of Connecticut when the winter comes, yeah. So we get a lot of individuals saying, like, I want to go down to Florida. Like, yep, okay, and there’s a whole thing about that. So we don’t know. None of us know what’s going to happen if someone gets injured, somebody you know whatever happens in their life. So that’s the importance of why. Because they they’ve raised their hand one day, one time, whether. 400 days ago, or, you know, within 400 days, they raised their hand for a reason. So, yeah, you know everything after that, we don’t know absolutely,

Sharad Mehta  35:09  

is there anything that an investor, some part of their business and investors should not rely on a VA for any aspect of the business, whether it’s marketing, acquisitions, disposition, operations, whatever it might be,

Bob Lachance  35:23  

I would say I would not rely on them to be the closer in your business. I know I hear a lot of other people. I’ve tried every position with VAs like I’ve tried everything, but if I am going to rely on someone else to feed my family, I want to make sure that I really control that process. So closing the actual deal, I think, is our responsibility. It’s just again, this is just my opinion. So you can have them send over a x amount of leads, warm them up, motivated sellers, that’s what you want set to your closers that are closed assassins, right? That are closed closes on the phone. That’s what I’ve realized. I know there may be some other, you know, people that are arguing with me, but you know, majority of it, that’s what I would say should be done by either you or someone in house that’s an acquisition specialist.

Sharad Mehta  36:16  

Yeah, that’s what I did. The same thing on like a lead manager. If you have a lead manager, virtual or in house, their role is to warm up the lead and set up an acquisition, set up an appointment for the acquisition person to go and close. That’s the That’s where their role ends. And it definitely makes a difference if you have the final closer based in us, or it’s someone like you yourself, if you’re solopreneur, that you do it, don’t leave that onto the VA. So yeah, I 100% agree with you on that, like the final, closing part of it, it’s something that you should take very, very like seriously before you hand it off to someone. So, yeah, great answer on that, Bob, absolutely incredible. Final couple of questions for you. I wanted to spec your time. What is it that you do for fun?

Bob Lachance  37:07  

What I do for fun? Well, I bring my kids to hockey. All three of my kids play ice hockey. So how would I do I have a 20 year old, a 16 and a 15 nice

Sharad Mehta  37:17  

they want to be professional like their dad.

Bob Lachance  37:21  

They do. My middle daughter is actually she plays hockey in prep school right now. So nice, yeah. So all of them I got my I got a son, son, daughter and son. That’s

Sharad Mehta  37:30  

awesome, man, yeah, is there one book? It could be recent book, or it could be, like, all time favorite that had the most influence on your life, business or personal?

Bob Lachance  37:41  

Yeah? I mean, obviously, you know, everyone, majority of people that are on this actually listen to this podcast, probably Rich Dad, Poor Dad. But I’ll give you a different one. One of the ones for me has been compound effect. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a thin book too, so it’s a very good read on it, yeah? And it’s, it’s all about how everything compounds on itself. And you look at real estate, and real estate is a long game. So if anyone’s looking to get in this business and get rich quick, you’re in the wrong business. You maybe see stuff on Instagram or whatever you guys see, but it this is a long game business, and this is why there’s many, many wealthy people that are in real estate. But it’s not an overnight success. It takes a while, and it’s okay, because before you’re not you’ll be 50, like me. So

Sharad Mehta  38:25  

no, man, yeah, it’s, I agree. It’s, it’s a, definitely, a long term game. You know what’s funny with your answer? So the second person who’s given that answer, and Greg hellback was on the podcast last week, he gave the answer, and he also used to play hockey, so maybe it’s like a, like, there’s

Bob Lachance  38:39  

a buddy of mine too. I

Sharad Mehta  38:40  

know Greg, yeah, yeah, that’s good. Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome, man. I final question, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with, and why?

Bob Lachance  38:53  

Very interesting. I just read the book by Steven Schwarzman, the one who owns Blackstone. So I’d probably say him just, you know, there’s a lot of takeaways in his book that I just read about. You know how he actually works with other individuals?

Sharad Mehta  39:11  

What was your biggest takeaway on

Bob Lachance  39:13  

there? Biggest takeaway is he cannot work by himself and only himself. Very, very smart individual, but he had a partner, and a lot of the companies that he actually, that he works with, that he owns, he owns, like 51% of it, and I could be off by the percentage, but he owns a majority, but he invests basically in the operator, right? So it’s a lot of syndication. So this is another takeaway of of syndication, so that that’s, that’s my answer on that one. But I just want to go one step further, because I know a lot of individuals invest in multifamily syndications, do your due diligence on the operator. So it’s kind of the same concept, right? If you have a very good operator with, you know, a great track record, that should give you more confidence to invest in that. Vacation. So it’s kind of the same thing, like Steven Schwarz, when he invests in that person who is going to be a partner that runs really, you know, takes a reign in the business, but he’ll, he’ll guide him. So that was my biggest takeaway on that side of it. So especially in our business, you know, yeah, for sure, service business,

Sharad Mehta  40:17  

yeah, you can have an individual who can turn around the business, but you cannot have a business who can turn around the individual. So yeah, that’s that’s great input. Hi, Bob. If someone wants to connect with you, learn more about you or Revo global. What’s the best way for them to do that? Check

Bob Lachance  40:33  

out our website, revoglobal.com you could also jump on a strategy session with our team. You could always email me, direct bob@rivaglobal.com r, e, v, a global.com and we’re on all the, you know, just just like you were on all the social media, social media,

Sharad Mehta  40:48  

yeah, we’ll put links to all of that in the show notes, Bob, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I truly appreciate it, man, thanks. Thanks

Bob Lachance  40:55  

for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks. You.