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The Age Of The Virtual Assistant With Bob Lachance

Episode 374: The Age Of The Virtual Assistant With Bob Lachance

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REIS 374 | Virtual Assistant

 

We live in the age of the virtual assistant where anything you need to get done can be done by someone living halfway across the world, leaving you so much more mental bandwidth to focus on what you need to focus on. Getting a virtual assistant is a gift to your business you won’t know you needed until you’ve hired one. Bob Lachance is a retired professional hockey player who has been an active business owner and real estate investor since 2004. Bob sits down with Mitch Stephen to share why hiring a virtual assistant was one of his best decisions as a business owner. If you’re on the brink of deciding if you need a virtual assistant, hear from someone whose life was ultimately made easier by hiring one.

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I have Bob Lachance on and we’re going to be talking about virtual assistants, VAs, and how and when you should consider them helping you. Bob, tell us a little bit about your background. You have a huge background. I was hoping you could pick out the high points because you’ve been around for a long time, probably since 2004. You helped a lot of the famous gurus that we know get along their path to where they are now as far as sales and seminars. It’s an interesting world. Tell us a little bit about it.

I played professional hockey for a few years and after I retired, I got into the investing world. I met my first mentor back in 2004, which I was lucky to get into. My first deal was a flip, which is a rehab deal. I got in the short-sale world. The short-sale world is one of the most interesting worlds you want to be in because you learn a lot about everything. Within that time, I’ve done over 700 short-sale transactions. I’ve helped develop some coaching programs along the way. During that time, I’ve found with my investing career in all the different students I’ve worked with through the years, that time was a huge issue within all of our businesses. Many investors work either part-time or full-time and have the dream of getting into real estate full time, which means they need someone to help them with tasks. Back in 2013, I got introduced to the world of virtual assistance. It was one of the things in the real estate agent world that was common but not in the investor world. A light bulb went on in 2014 that there could be a business, an industry there.

I tested it for about a year with a separate company I did not own to make sure the proof of concept will work. I helped them develop a training company. This was out of the Philippines. They handled all the recruiting. I helped create the training program, a month training program for virtual assistants so they would be very equipped with working with real estate investors in the tasks they needed. I tested that for a year, tested that for another year and then the proof of concept worked. I went out and now we are a few years later.

I like it when I get to talk to athletes because they seem to have an inherent stickiness. They don’t go away easy and they usually get back up pretty fast. This business rule is not without its lessons and its hard lessons. I’m not surprised when athletes shine in the entrepreneurial thing. This subject is huge for me. I have six virtual assistants myself. They’re all from the Philippines. They do a tremendous amount of work for me, stuff I’m not going to do. This is one of the things I tell everybody. As the entrepreneur and as the owner of the business, you can say you’re going to do these tasks every week. As an entrepreneurial high-strung, triple-A, you’re going to do it for maybe several days. Some of these things are critical because people say what the key to success is? I say massive action and massive consistency. There are little things that have to get done every single day or week or month. When you miss them, it screws up your pipeline. Why the Philippines? I noticed there’s India, there’s China, there’s Russia. You could get VAs from anywhere. Why did you pick the Philippines?

I’ve tested a lot of different areas and I found that in the Philippines, English proficiency is excellent and it’s only getting better and better. I go there two, three times a year and meet with my team. It’s the proficiency of the individuals, the younger they get. They’re all college-educated who come through my program. They have worked for me and worked for our clients and customers. They all have college degrees and English is one of their main languages. That’s what separates them from everybody else from India to Russia because the accent is phenomenal.

That’s really important in some cases. In other cases, it’s not so important. Do you get a little bit of a discount if they don’t speak English that well?

We break it down. It depends on what tasks. You have individuals that if you only want admin work done, like social media, you don’t need someone talking on the phone. They could be way better at admin work rather than accents. What I’m finding are the individuals who would come through our pipeline and how we recruit over there, the accents have been getting better and better.

We have this poem. It’s called it English Is Hard or something. We make them try to read the poem. I can hardly read the poem. You’ve been doing all that stuff for the person. For a person who doesn’t have the time to train or doesn’t want to make the time to train, your business is an excellent business. Let’s talk about those tasks. What’s the name of the list?

It’s the 100 plus tasks virtual assistants can do and we break it down whether they’re wholesalers, rehabbers, buy and hold or agents. It’s a checklist you can use. One of the main reasons why we do that is when someone asks me and says, “I’m busy. I know I need help. What could a VA do for me?” We send them through that process. I give them a quick checklist. When they meet with our team, we walk through that. It’s almost like a consultation on how a VA can be best used in their business.

I want everyone to go to 1000houses.com/VAHelp and get 100 plus things a VA can do. It’s a free list and it’s hard to think sometimes you think, “I want a VA,” and then you think about getting one and you think, “What am I going to have them do?” It’s amazing you have all this stuff they can do and you get stymied. This is going to be a great list especially if you break it down by different strategies. If you’re a wholesale flipper, rehabber or whatever, that’s interesting to see what the differences would be in the task. Let’s just pick some of the top tasks. What do you get for them?

It all depends. I always break it down to what is the biggest pain point in your business? If you’re a rehabber, if you’re a wholesaler, if you’re a buy and hold, if you own a property management company, Airbnb, whatever it is. We all have pain points in our business. I’ll tell you a little bit about some pain points in my business. I don’t know what quote it is. I think it was episode 275. I want to quote what you said, “The best service providers out there are the ones that do the business and use their own service.”

I have private investors that loan me money to buy my houses. One of the first things I point out to them is I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in this exact thing I’m asking you to put it in. I’m going to use it. I’m in it up to here. I believe in it.

REIS 374 | Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant: The best service providers out there are the ones that do the business and use their own service.

 

To anchor back to your question of top tasks, out of my office and the majority of the clients that come through us, we look at two different types of virtual assistants. One is individuals who are better on the phone. You break them up into phone virtual assistance and admin virtual assistants. The top ones, especially out of my office, are the VAs that run outbound dialing to gauge seller motivation. That’s a huge one.

That’s what I use. That’s what I’ve got. We have a phone room going out to the tax delinquents and all the other lists we find in the courthouse. We have them to find out is this number connecting to anybody relevant to what I’m trying to get done? Will they answer the phone? Are they the guy I’m looking for the owner? Do they want to talk? If all those happen, they’re getting turned over right out to my closer. Even if they’re not a sharp negotiator, I’m using them to call out these hundreds of phone numbers that don’t meet the standard. They’re pulling about 200 a day. We have four of them. We’re going through 800 people strategically. The new trend, which I’m sure you’re well aware of, is we don’t mail postcards to these people anymore. We call them. When you look at the cost of a VA compared to the cost of a mailing and the different level of effectiveness, one is personal, one is impersonal. It makes perfect sense. We start mailing postcards to the ones that have acknowledged they want to talk. We use that as our additional touches. That was a not so obvious shift in the business, but it’s been a definite shift. Have you noticed that?

To add to that too, there’s a great follow-up to exactly what you did. The reason why I started doing that is when I first started my business, I door knocked for about a year straight. I went from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM every single day. When I would get home, I would see some vacant houses. I would get those skips traced, run comps and outbound dial. After you do that for a while, you’re dead tired. That’s one of the things you’re doing well. You’re the business owner and you’re not hammering the phones that drain you. You have a virtual assistant do that for you.

You may not be that familiar with my organization and I wouldn’t expect you to be, but I bought 97 houses in 2018. I average about 100 houses a year for many years running. I’ve bought 2,000 houses since 1996 in my hometown or surrounding counties, somewhere close. That’s neither here nor there. I’m sure right down the street is someone who could wallpaper their house with the number of contracts I’ve done. The point is that’s still a lot of houses and how that happens I have four or five acquisitions streams depending on if anyone’s left yet or not because not everybody stays for the longest amount of time. It takes a while to find the guys that stick for years, but I opened up lanes. One is if someone’s going to be handling the property tax delinquencies, then no one else in my organization deals with that. They got to leave that alone. It’s already taken.

One of them is a guy that came into the workforce who was making a decent living, but he was in the credit card collections for several years. He was good at it. He was running the phone room where these credit card debt collectors would call out. He comes and says, “I’m ready to do something new and I’ve got to do something to build a future. Do you have any place? My partner said, “Let’s try it out.” He did well on his own and once he figured out how to sell it on his own, then he says, “What I want to do is open up a phone room. Can I open up a phone room and get people to bring more leads through me?”

We supported him through that. We hired Philippine VAs, which I’d have been a little more in tune with where you were at. That’s how I was able to do the 97 because I’ve got four people in lanes working and they all have virtual assistants to do the menial things or the things they don’t want to do. We plow through a load of leads every day to see which one stands out or who raises their hand and says, “I’d like to talk.” It’s not rocket science, but it’s not easy either, is it?

With VAs from The Philippines, English proficiency is excellent. Click To Tweet

No, it’s not. I’ll add to that too. You look at what your time is worth. All of us have to take a step back and look at what our time is worth. When I have investors and someone comes to me and say, “Bob, I want to use a VA.” I said, “Why do you want to use VA?” It always comes and breaks down into two different categories. One is they want a better life balance or lifestyle and the other one comes to, “I want to make more money.” Age changes things. You start looking at things differently the older we get. The younger I was I want to make money. I fell in that bucket. Now I’m a little different. I got three kids. I want more life balance.

When I wake up in the morning, my goal is no matter what, I want to make sure I wake up with my kids. I eat breakfast with them. I want to make sure I’m with them every morning. I know my team of virtual assistants is working on recruiting incredible VAs for our clients. My training team is working in training those VAs to fulfill what our clients need. I know that I could wake up in the morning and be able to do that. That’s life balance. Later on in the day they are working on my real estate business, they’re hammering the phones, they are running comps or skip tracing, things like that.

Let’s say I’m in San Antonio, Texas. If I want to talk to you about a VA for me and they’ve got to get into the San Antonio Court House. Do you go in and help them learn how to navigate this specific courthouse I want?

Any information you could get online, done on the computer or the phone, a virtual assistant can do absolutely anything.

One of the things we had ours do was we made them record their moves on the computer. I wanted them to document exactly what they did every day. For one time, document how you get into the courthouse. Where you go to find list A, where you go to find list B, and document it one time so that if I ever need to replace them or they need to move on, I don’t have to retrain them and start over from zero. I’ve got this video of exactly what this guy was doing on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday. My VAs does different tasks on different days, but we check in like, “I need you to check this list every Monday. I need you to check who’s new on this list every Tuesday.” Every seven days I’m seeing who’s popping up new down at the courthouse that is of use to me.

You’re staying ahead of the game too. You’re having them do this every single day.

REIS 374 | Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant: A virtual assistant can do absolutely anything, whether it’s gathering any information you need online or getting work done on the computer or the phone.

 

I’m checking in every seven days on all these lists to see who’s new. Part of what separates me from the amateurs is speed. That was another one of those things you got to have to stay in this business. You got to get there first. There’s so much competition. You have to get there first. You have to make your presentation first and get it signed as fast as possible because by the time this lead becomes 30 days old, everybody’s going to have them.

I have a good one for you. I started with a code violation list and an eviction list. I started that campaign. A good buddy investor of mine out of Florida uses that campaign where their virtual assistant does 99% of the work they have to do. It’s a start to finish system process they use their virtual assistant. Maybe that’s something you could try in your business.

There are other ones that are hard that you have to get someone to go down to the courthouse, like our courthouse, which doesn’t provide a few things. Here’s a real nugget for you out there. Finding a person who filed for a writ of possession is usually not on courthouse computer records. Writ of possession is when you have to hire a sheriff to go in and drag somebody out of a house and handcuff them to a mailbox while you empty their stuff out on the street and change the locks. That’s not a big list, but it’s a good list because the owner that has gone through that process has been dragged as far through the mud as humanly they can be dragged. It’s a good list because by the time they get to the end of that, if they’re not a pro, they don’t want anymore to do with a rented house or owner finance house.

If you have that list, you get it skip traced. A virtual assistant could do all of that for you. They can outbound dial, gauge motivation and send it to you.

What are some more things a VA can do?

They could do skip tracing, outbound dialing, inbound dialing, running comps, Craigslist posting, social media. One of the things that were important and that resonates with me because I went through this and probably 99% of your audience has gone through this. With social media, it’s having a presence out there. A lot of us miss the concept of social media. If you have a lender looking up my name, what they’re going first to do is they’re going to look on social media. They’re going to say, “Is Bob in business?” If he’s looking at a virtual assistant company, he’s going to say, “What does their Facebook page look like? If you don’t have posts every single day, they’re going to be like, “He’s probably not in business.” They start questioning whether you’re the right person or not the right person.

All of us have to take a step back and look at what our time is worth. Click To Tweet

It’s a credibility issue. They look at your card and then they get on the computer and you don’t show up.

Especially for investors, new investors or seasoned investors. You spend the first day. You’re all hot to try it. You learn about a new system or process in your one, two, three, ten days ago. All of a sudden, you’re like, “I’m going golfing or I’m going fishing or I’m doing this,” and then it gets easy.

It’s Christmas. It’s Thanksgiving. This stuff is got to get done no matter what. I get sick for a few days or whatever, this flu thing going around. One of the reasons you use the Philippines or overseas workers is the difference in the value of the dollar. It can be a tremendous value. I would like for you to put it in perspective because I may not have it in the right perspective. I’m thinking $5 an hour for Filipinos is a $50,000 a year job is what I’ve been led to think, something like that. For $10 an hour or less, you’re picking up people that used to be hospital floor administrators. $10 in the United States of America will get you someone that can’t take your order. Ask me how I know, I just went there. I got so frustrated before I got here that I said, “You’re not worth to order breakfast from. I’m going to go.”

I also have used supplies company. My cleaners and tech guys are making $12 to $13 an hour. The minimum wage here in Connecticut is $10.10, but I can never get them on the phones, I can never get them to my real estate company because it’s not the level I need. Where I could go to the Philippines, someone’s college-educated, I could get that, which is phenomenal.

Is English the only reason? There are some other cultural differences. Russia and China, you have a good idea. They’re likely to go start it themselves or they’re a little more entrepreneurial. I get the feeling that the Philippines love being associated with a company that values them and treats them well.

Culture and family are huge in the Filipino community. It’s a loving environment and community. When we go there, they love the community. They love being taken care of. Us as a company, we make sure that we focus on that. We have some great benefits for them as well. When we recruit, we recruit the top of the top. We created an advanced placement system, which is a five-step system with recruiting and vetting, which is one and two. The second step is we run a background check. We want to make sure they don’t have criminal records in the background, which is extremely important. We also run through a four-week intensive real estate training program. We also do DISC profiling. Do you know much about DISC profiling?

REIS 374 | Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant: In any business, the longevity of your staff or your team that stays is going to either make or break it. If you have too much turnover, that’s a huge cost in any business.

 

I use it myself.

We walk them through the advanced placement system, every one of our VAs, before they even get to our clients. In the end, we have them do scorecards in training and scorecards in recruiting to make sure they’re the top of the top. We only allow about 5% of the applications we get in recruiting that get through to training, which means we sift through a lot. The number of applications we run through, you’d be shocked at how many people we turn away because of things like problem-solving and critical thinking. First of all, we start them through a systems check to make sure they have the right system. What I mean by that is their internet connection. Do they have a backup if something happens? It’s not like us over here.

It’s not like we’re going to call Comcast to come over when we have a little shakiness in our internet. It takes three to five days. If they don’t have the correct backup, then the experience for the end user, which is us, is not going to be good because if they can’t get connections, they can’t be working that day. It’s important. We work it through paper screening, system check, first interview, second interview to get things like oral proficiency, grammar, pronunciation and accent. Are they reliable? Do they have time management? Those are some of the things we sift through before they get to our training team. When they get to our training team then we train them for four weeks on the outbound dial, running comps, filling buyer’s list and real estate 101.

When they get through to that and we do the DISC profiling, then our placement team will say, “Mitch, what tasks do you want to be done?” If you say, “I want someone on the phone,” then we look at the DISC profile to make sure if they’re a high S and a high C. That means they’re most likely not going to be good on the phones. If they’re a high D and high I, their personality will fit whatever that task is. We marry those two together with the tasks that you want as an end user. That’s what I do in my business and how I use VAs.

I’m a believer in the personality test because I was the worst hiring boss in the world. I hired people for all the wrong reasons and never stayed. When they left, half of them went into competition with me. I test them for honesty, integrity, to be money-motivated, to be sincere or dedicated, attention to detail maybe. I also test them to make sure they do not manage their personal finances well because I need them to stay broke so they can’t start a business and go off on their own. The biggest one ever, they don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in their body. That’s what I’m looking for. Since I’ve started using that, I had a huge jump in my success of hiring people. The people that it told me to hire, I was looking at them going, “There’s no way this guy’s going to last a week.” They’ve been with me now for three years. It was uncanny how I was wrong and this test was so much better. I’m a believer in that for sure.

In any business, the longevity of your staff or your team that stays is going to either make or break it. If you have too much turnover, that’s a huge cost in any business.

Price or value: what do you want? Click To Tweet

It’s demoralizing as a business owner for a lot of turnovers because you’re starting over with everybody all the time and you’re getting tired of hearing yourself talk.

That’s why we created the systems that we have in our business. I have a client out of Atlanta that uses one of our VAs and uses another VA. They just joined us and that VA went MIA for two days. They’re like, “I need help now.” If one of our VA’s is out, we have the backing to fulfill that role for those clients.

A substitute VA for a couple of days. You got substitute teachers. You have substitute VAs. Here’s the problem I want to see how you’re handling and you don’t have to give up all the secret sauce. I know because I figured out how to solve it, but I was wondering if you are solving it. They don’t like Filipino skip tracers. The software that you’re using to skip trace, they don’t like overseas skip tracers. Have you figured how to deal with that?

We have some unique ways to do it. It’s a login. There’s a couple of different ways.

I don’t want you to give up the sauce. I’m not asking that, but I’m talking to the audience. If you go out there and think you’re going to get your VA to start skip tracing for you, you got another thing coming. They may take away your software altogether once they find out. You better get in the know about that or you’re going to lose your skip tracing.

I don’t know if you know this, but Upwork is a big company. They don’t allow their VAs to post on Craigslist any longer. I just heard this. That’s a huge task we use. My company uses VAs to comb through Craigslist and to post on Craigslist as well.

REIS 374 | Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant: Investors have to focus on money-generating activities, not sitting by phones or running computers.

 

What’s the theory? Were they getting shut down all the time?

They were getting shut down all the time. They were getting flagged. They were getting spammed. If you have an influx of VAs spamming on Craigslist, it doesn’t make Craigslist valuable anymore if you have all this junk.

They are looking for overseas IP addresses, which is not fair because there are good legitimate people, but there are ways around it. You can’t be an average Joe. You got to learn about that. Talk about price. What are you charging for VAs?

For a twenty-hour VA, it’s $848 per month. That’s a part-time VA. We do part-time and full-time. We don’t do hourly basis. It’s $1,536 for a full-time VA. That’s 40 hours a week. It’s typically whatever hours you want them to work. You could work that out for them.

One thing I was concerned about when I was hiring VAs is it’s in the middle of the night when I need them to work. I asked one or two of the Filipinos, “Is that going to be all right?” They said, “Don’t worry about what time it is, just tell me what time you want me to work.” I was impressed with that there. Apparently, they know that that’s what it takes to work for the United States businessman. You got to work when they’re open and we’re open at strange hours for Filipinos, but they deal with it.

It’s typically a twelve-hour difference. They do work at night. That’s typically their night shift.

If we, as a society, are only going to shop for price, we’re not going to get value.CLICK TO TWEET

I found their attitude towards that was great. If an American was to work at night, they’d probably go, “I don’t need this job. I’ll go on.” The other thing is some people say we’re taking jobs from Americans or we’re using the Filipinos and taking advantage of them. I don’t feel that way at all. Give me your viewpoint on it.

Here’s the way I look at it. I fly to the Philippines around three times a year to meet with my team. I do know I could sleep at night knowing that we pay them well. We take care of a lot of their benefits and we offer benefits which is incredible. What we pay them is good. We take great care of them. We care about them one-on-one, whatever they need. We offer some other benefits behind the scenes. If they need loans for certain things, we offer them loans. If they need time off, we offer them paid time off, things like that as a company. I don’t feel we’re taking jobs away because I live in Connecticut. They’re looking to jump the minimum wage from $10.10 to $15. They showed an actual clip with a business owner and it’s someone who owns a cafe. He says, “I won’t be able to have a business anymore. If I have to pay somebody that much money, I’m going to have to be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week and I won’t be able to hire anybody. I’m going to have to go out of business.”

That’s true. Most of the people I know that have VAs would not have a VA if they had to pay that price. The other thing about it is the advent of the internet and the computer, it’s given countries like the Philippines a middle class because they’re able to start their own businesses, create their own jobs or find jobs because of this new technology. I feel the same way. There’s a coincidence of a price or dollar exchange difference, so it makes sense. We can use them for certain things in certain ways and they benefit greatly too. It’s a win-win situation for the business owner and the VA community.

Here’s the way I put it. I give this example all the time. I did rehab on one of the first houses that I own and I bought a Home Depot door at the back of the house. It was a French door. Every summer I would yell at that door. Every winter, it’s cold up here. Literally, the heat is flying out the door. I tried to save money. I tried to save $800. The door was about $100. My energy bill went through the freaking roof and I would snap on that door. That’s the time I looked at the door and I said, “Price or value, what do you want?” You get what you pay for. That’s a takeaway there. If we as a society are only going to shop for price, you’re not going to get value. With everything in this world, that’s why you have luxury stuff and stuff that breaks apart.

I want you to go to 1000houses.com/VAHelp and find out more about how VAs can change your business. There is also a link to get the top 100 things a VA can do. Get your list and apply it to your strategy or business and see how eye-opening that is. There’s a lot of tasks that you might not think of right off the bat. You’re also going to get a link and all the contact information you need to hook up with Bob Lachance and his company. If you’re serious about considering a VA, call up, get ahold of him and find out if it’s for you or not. I’m pretty sure at the end of the day you’re going to find out that it makes no sense to do it.

There’s bound to be things that you can be having done on a consistent basis, in a timely fashion, and probably better than you’re going to do it because you’re not going to do it very long. It makes sense. I have six Vas. They stay busy every day and God bless them. I’m glad I have them. The jobs that maybe I think are menial are important to them. That’s their living. They wake up every morning and they’re focused on it. They’re getting it done 100 times better than I’m going to get it done because to me, it’s not the biggest thing on my plate. To them, it’s the point of getting up in the morning and going into the job.

I want to add something to that too because it’s important. For us as investors, we have to be focusing on money-generating activities. It’s not sitting on the phones, it’s not running comps, it’s not skip tracing. It’s meeting with sellers. Our VAs set appointments for us. It is meeting those sellers. It’s meeting private money lenders. It’s meeting hard money lenders. It’s meeting agents, attorneys, brokers, etc. You know the old saying, “Our network is our net worth,” or, “Our network creates our net worth.” That’s really important. This is funny. My son buys these sneakers. He gets sold into buying these $220 sneakers. He knows there’s a market out there that are selling it for $300.

I’m like, “He’s fifteen. He’s thinking entrepreneurial. Perfect.” All of a sudden, he can’t find a buyer at the beginning and he posts them through a couple of sites he knows. He can’t sell them. Two months go by and he’s still trying to sell them. His buddy, James, has a site that he knows he could sell them at. Now he works out a deal with him to where he’ll give him $20 and sold them for $300. He talked to me, he’s like, “Dad, I sold those things. I made $30,” because the company takes little. I said, “Bobby, tell me a little bit about what you learned.” I told him a little bit about the network. He’s at a private school and now you teach them these little things. It’s funny because they equate that to us and I look at that in business and owning a virtual assistant company in my own business. It’s the same thing. Our network should be spent going to masterminds, meeting with individuals that could help grow your business, not doing those tasks that drain you. It’s a funny takeaway little story I wanted to add in there.

In the real estate investing arena, usually, when you first start out, there are some commonalities I’ve noticed over the years. Most of the time, the newbie’s broke. Second of all, they’re wearing every single hat. They don’t have any money to pay anybody. Some of the first hats you can take off, the easiest things to delegate are number one, bookkeeping. Number two is collections. Those are easy. There’s always someone out there. If you don’t have a lot of collections, your bill will be small. If you don’t have a lot of books so you’re not running a lot of business, you’re thinking your bill is going to be small. The next thing is the VA. Probably one of the first things in my humble opinion that a new person should hire is a leads manager, someone to manage all the leads you’re going out there and finding.

They didn’t say yes right off the bat and they weren’t what we call a laydown. We didn’t run right over and get a contract, but they’re going to sell their house to somebody in the next several months and I got to stick with them. If you’re going to generate those leads and then let them roll over into the trash, you’re making a huge mistake. The first VAs you hire is at least to manage your leads, stay up with them and keep in touch with them. You always find other things for them to do, especially if you get a free list of 100 plus things for your VA to do.

It does take, on average, the industry standard is about seven touches before you get a deal. That’s 100% right. The leads managers are responsible for following up on all of those leads. If you call me and ask if I’m looking to sell my house now, my motivation will probably be different in a few months.

We’re waiting until their circumstances close in where they come to the realization that their house is not worth $1 million. Bob, thanks a lot for taking the time. Did I miss anything or is there anything that you want to talk to our audience about before we go? I wanted to let them know that there is some real help out there. If you’re looking for a VA and you don’t know what to do or you don’t want to deal with all the things it takes to find a good VA, you got some professional help here. How long have you been doing it? Since when?

Since 2014.

It sounds like you have a great company. I’m looking forward to hearing some feedback from some people that get VAs from you.

If anyone needs any, go to your link. If you have any questions on any of that, our team is absolutely incredible to answer any questions that you have. Mitch, I want to thank you for having me on your show. It’s been a lot of fun. I love your podcast. It’s one of the best. I appreciate it.

Thanks. Go to 1000houses.com/VAHelp. It’ll be all the information you need to be able to talk to Bob or his company and they’ll treat you well. Before I go, don’t forget, check out TaxFreeFuture.com. You will not believe what your financial advisors are not telling you. If you don’t have a tax-deferred or tax-free environment in which to grow your retirement funds or grow your wealth, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Please check it out. There are over 37 videos over there. They are short, sweet and to the point. You will learn a lot from them. I did. I interviewed a guy that was 24 years as an IRS attorney who specialises in retirement plans, how not to mess them up and how to undo the messes if you happen to do some prohibitive transactions or something. That’s what he does for 24 years and that’s who I was talking to on those videos. Bob, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Thank you.

 

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About Bob Lachance

REIS 289 | Virtual AssistantBob Lachance has been an active business owner and real estate investor since 2004. Bob is an entrepreneur by nature and currently owns, operates and manages many different businesses around the world.

Bob helped create one of the top Real Estate Coaching and Mentor programs in existence today and also created one of the premiere Virtual Assistant Staffing companies, REVA Global LLC. Bob is an expert in the real estate investing space and has an incredible reputation for creation, implementation and execution.

Bob Lachance is a sought-after mentor and industry expert, lending his voice to countless real estate investors, startups and entrepreneurs looking to take their businesses to the next level. Prior to getting into the business sector, Bob had a successful 8-year professional ice hockey career which allowed him the privilege of traveling and living all over the United States and Europe. Bob was also a member of the 1995 National Championship Boston University Ice Hockey Team.

 

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