The Keith Andrews Podcast

Grow Your Business With Virtual Assistants | Bob Lachance E31

• Keith Andrews • Season 1 • Episode 31

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In this episode of The Keith Andrews Podcast, Keith sits down with Bob Lachance, a former professional hockey player turned real estate investor and founder of REVA Global, to talk about how virtual assistants (VAs) can help you grow and scale your business. Bob shares how he used VAs to build his own real-estate empire and now helps entrepreneurs do the same—saving time, cutting costs, and creating true freedom. Whether you’re an investor, agent, or small-business owner, this episode shows how the right systems and people can take your business to the next level.

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And I think that a lot of people that are out there that are doing these side hustles that are working a nine to five, this could work perfectly for them without breaking the bank. Yeah, and I want to add to that too, because it's funny you said that. I cannot find anybody that is any quality for less than 30 bucks an hour. It's it's ridiculous. And you got your virtual assistants that have four year college degrees, you know, for less than, you know, $10 and 60 cents an hour. you you Wow I've got you who went from pro hockey to building one of the top virtual assistant companies in the country. We talk about how any small business, not just real estate, can use VAs to grow, get organized, and buy back their time. So Bob, for those that don't know you, can you please give us a quick uh version of your story? I know you were drafted by the St. Louis Blues. I was oh You play professional hockey and then somehow ended up in real estate. story how it went down. All right, I'll give you a two second rundown before I got into, yeah, this is, jeez, we're going back now. As you can tell, uh my grays are not, you know, I, why do the grays start right here on the beard? Just doesn't make any sense, but. You know, they start right here and underneath. It's like my neck is all gray and I got a little bit of brown still stuck in there, but it's weird. That's it. All right. So I started investing back in 2004. Prior to that, like I said, I played professional hockey for eight years. I went to Boston University, got drafted, like I said, by the St. Louis Blues in the sixth round. Fortunate enough, spent four years at Boston University, won a national championship, which is pretty cool. And then my final year got offered a contract to play for, you know, in the St. Louis Blues organization. Because when you sign a contract, you still got to make the team. Yeah. I did not end up making it, played one exhibition game with them, which was pretty cool. But I ended up playing in the minor leagues for four years here in the U S went over to Europe, play four more years. And then, you know, reality hit I'd a wife and kid at home. And it was either, I don't know, go around the world and try to figure out how you're going to make, you know, pay your bills by the time you retire. Cause I was always thinking about, you know, sports don't last forever, unfortunately. So anyway, when I decided to retire. It was either go back to school because I left two classes short to get my degree or jump into an industry that does not need a, or it has zero bears of entry. So I ended up going into real estate because, we all do those studies. We read books like rich dad, poor dad, and know, the richest people, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yeah. So jumped into real estate and, um, my first deal, I started door knocking and, um, met a business partner. My first deal was actually a rehab. Then I jumped into the short sale world this back in 2004. And then we were extremely busy, helped start a real estate education company. And then while I was flipping, lending and teaching students, I was always looking for some sort of service or product that was going to help our students do tasks more or fulfill their tasks because what would happen, and you probably hear this a lot. Regular investors are people that you went through the rat race, right? You had a job and you're doing real estate on the side. So that was a lot of our student base. So I was always saying, there's gotta be something out there, service products, something that will help them do that. Cause I would get on a coaching call one week and then the next week they'd book another call and I'd say, Hey, what'd you do? Well, you know, nothing. Basically they didn't do anything. So I was always trying to look at it. Literally this is back in 2007, eight, nine, 10. And then finally in 2013, I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. And I'm like, hold on, I think we got something here. So I hired my first VA and then a light bulb went on. said, there's a business here. I just don't know what it is, but I know there's a business here because this is a needed product. Yes. So I got my VA and I put them through our training that we created. And then I was like, all right, we got something. Then I had a business partner back 2014 and all of my virtual assistants. virtual assistant started in the Philippines and he had the opportunity to go back and forth where I didn't because at that time I had three kids and coaching hockey and all that kind of good stuff. So my job was over here and his job was go back and forth and kind of build the infrastructure with me and then fast forward today. A different company but we have a real estate line because I also have a real estate business. I'll tell you that about that in a second. We have a medical line and a real estate line for virtual assistant services. uh And we use our own VA's and our own business. I know we'll get to this, but we did over 230 transactions last year and set to do a little bit more this year. So that's for your real estate business where you're leveraging the VAs from your other business uh that have been trained already and vetted. they know what they're doing from day one. all trained and vetted. So, and I know you do the same thing. It's, it's you have your core business and there's always ways to build businesses off of that core business, which there is, which real estate with property management, buying and holding, fixing, flipping, construction, so on and so forth. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy how many paths and avenues can branch off of just from real estate, right? when you start investing in real estate you start seeing all these missing pieces and stumbling blocks and you start fixing them and then you realize wow me fixing them is creating a new business So let's just because there's some listeners right now that you said VA and they're like virtual Is it like a virtual person? Is it a real person? Can you just break down what a VA is? It's very simple. Since COVID now, think people are more kind of understanding of what a virtual assistant is. So for me, all of our virtual assistants are in the Philippines. No matter what, you could have a virtual assistant in another state and another town that does not work in your office. So it's very commonplace now. You have virtual staff. know, doctors offices have virtual staff, not even in that office. have... real estate offices, brokerages, investment offices, same thing, property management, a lot of that is all outsourced to virtual staff. just to keep it simple, it's someone who does not work in your office is a virtual person or assistant, if you will. Now are these virtual assistants typically working for other people too, not just yourself? Yeah, we have uh two models. One is a part-time model. So a 20 hour a week virtual assistant. They'll have two clients and then a full-time virtual assistant 40 hours a week. They'll have one client dedicated to you. Okay, so let's just break this down. So I'm a real estate investor. I'm hunting down my next deal. I'm just, I don't have the time to go door knocking. I don't have the time to start cold calling people. So what can a virtual assistant do for me as far as bringing me leads and also uh boiling it down so that they're like real leads that we can actually do something with. Yeah, so basically, very simple. could either, depending on what you want to do for marketing, right? Are you, are they calling back your PPC leads? Are they taking calls in from your direct mail? Are they following up on older leads? Are they direct to seller calling? Are they just reaching out directly? So what we do is we have them reach out, either take inbound or they're going outbound. They pre-screen that lead. What they do is they get They go back and forth information and then they pick up the phone. say, listen, we're a home buying company. We're looking to buy three to four houses in your area this year. Are you interested in selling or this month? Are you interested in selling? They say, yes, a perfect. Okay. I'll have my partner or my boss give you a call back at this time. Are you free? Yes, no. So that's a lead. That's a warm lead. It's a lot better than, you know, throwing stuff on, hoping somebody calls back. That's a real need that we love in our office. So We do this, we, that system I use for myself to be able to drive in leads for our sales floor clothes for us to buy and resell. Okay. uh a virtual assistant could also help. Let's say I'm a realtor and I'm just looking for the traditional buyers and sellers. uh These VAs could also help with that lead generation as well, Property management, I have maintenance issues, people calling in. They can jump, I can give them an email and everything. uh What about the phone number? Do you guys have a system that you... provide so that they have like a local number and all that stuff. Okay. We use Zoom and then we also use smartphone with a local number. Okay, cool. um So what's the typical cost of having a VA? Let's say I wanted to replace a 40-hour a week employee. m Yeah. For us, it's $10 and 60 cents an hour. They come trained. You get a client service manager that oversees that virtual assistant. So you literally get two lines of defense. If you want to add in some training on top of that, your manager partner will also help train them on top of anything new that you want to add to them. So we keep it very standard. I tried every different model. You you have companies that say, I get them for three bucks. I'm like, you get what you pay for. Go get them. You know, so that's why for me, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm very confident in what we charge because, like I said, I've been doing this for over 10 years and I've seen everything from way higher to way lower. And this is the good ground to where we get to really pour and invest back into our team and infrastructure. We also pay for invest in their healthcare as well back in the Philippines. So when we pay, I'm just curious from like a business, a like payroll tax perspective, are you just a service that we would like, if I was going, if I wanted a virtual assistant 40 hours a week, I would pay you as a service and then we get that employee as a part of that service? Correct. Okay. Okay. So we don't have to worry about any of those um insurance issues. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Quick question. Cause I know AI is like, all over the place right now and it's replacing a lot of these. I mean they can sit there and talk to you now and everything else and make intelligent decisions. How do you see AI impacting virtual assistants? I see there's gonna be a lot of regulations coming down to be 100 % frank with you because if you have an outbound voice activated AI calling somebody, there's a lot of fraud going on. know there's some reading lot of articles on how AI, em there's unscrupulous people out there that use AI to call. someone like my dad, right? Who is 79 years old and they say, hey, you know, they use our voice. Let's say they take our voice and they put it on a phone and they say, hey, you know what they could do. They could say, hey, you know, send me a thousand dollars right now because I have your, you know, I have your son and you know, Yeah, it's it's it's it's happened. It's happened. mean, I literally get a text message every day from some random person that just says, hey, are we still good to meet for coffee or something? I like fun with those. I do too. I do too. I have to admit I do. I go back and forth and at the very end I drop in I'm 13 years old and then they usually just like what? They disappear. uh no, actually another thing that happened to my stepdaughter was she got a call from someone and this guy said that she had my daughter, so her stepsister, held in handcuffs or something. and that they were gonna kill her if she didn't send $500 and she could hear my daughter screaming in the background. It's pretty crazy what they're able to do. The way they're able to emulate the voices and everything else is pretty scary. And now we have video too that's just. That's why I think, so I think it's going to be great. And this is, and this is my opinion, right? Because I know a lot of, I'm buddies with a lot of guys that actually are creating AI. It, it's going to work not on the outbound, but it may work on a followup, right? So the voice is getting pretty good on followup. So I always look at, and this is any business, you always have to look at how are you going to lose business? So I have to look at my virtual assistant companies. I may lose some people to AI a hundred percent. But I also have to put my business hat on and say, how do I use that to my benefit? Right? So we're training all of our VA's on AI. So this is how I'm getting ahead of it. Cause people don't understand this that, or a lot of people don't understand that AI still needs somebody to run it. Right? Cause what we're talking about is two different things. We're talking about some automated service, but if you want to do video, you still need to do understand prompts. understand how to do it. I just had a call today on my VA team and I changed all of our AI generated content for our own business. So uh that's something we got to look at because for us and me to stay ahead of the curve, I'm training all my VA's on AI and how to use it for the benefit of our clients. It doesn't matter what industry. Okay. Well, that's cool. And I think at the end of the day, people really want to talk to somebody. Yeah. and you can tell it's getting harder, but you can tell just by the responses and everything else. And so as far as the hours go, um, cause I know if these people are working out of the Philippines, they know they're on a different time zone. So can we, like, if I wanted to have someone in mountain time, you know, nine to five, manning the phones and also responding to email inquiries and stuff like that. And when they're not doing that, they're doing other proactive things that we want them to do. Is that something that you could provide us? And it's like literally $10 a month per person. Yep. That's the exact same thing. they work our time zone. So I'm Eastern Standard Time. I live in Connecticut. do our real estate companies in Connecticut, Mass, Pennsylvania, a little bit of Rhode Island. We were down south back when the hedge funds were buying. But we pulled out of there because obviously, you know, they're not really buying as much right now today. They'll probably open back up again and start buying. But we're doing a lot of stuff down south, but we're predominantly up here as well. Wow, that is cool. And what's the turnover like with these VAs? Because I would think the turnover is pretty high. For our company, so we offer a lot of different benefits. Like we have our event coming up in November. We'll have a little over 500 virtual assistants showing up. We hold an event in the Philippines once a year. So our turnover is very, very low because we pay them very competitively. We also pay for lot of their, like we said, pay for their health care and some other benefits as well as some different programs that we offer them. So it's very, very for us. our stick rate is extremely high. That's good. That's good. know I'm, our, my business is growing right now. Um, and I literally like, when I first left in my nine to five, I sat around and just, you know, took my, I took my, my kid off at school. went to the gym for a few hours. Maybe I played golf and then I started this podcast cause I was bored and then I ended up starting a business and I working probably just as hard as I ever did. Um, when I, when I had a corporate job, And so we did hire one full-time employee and we are looking at like expanding our team right now because we need to. Um, and I'd love to have it. We've been talking about having a VA. I'm personally definitely interested in talking to you more about this when we get off this, uh, this podcast. Um, and I think that a lot of people that are out there that are doing these, you know, side hustles that are working in nine to five, this could work perfectly for them without breaking the bank. Yeah. And I want to add to that too, because it's funny you said that you look at minimum wage in every state. It's only going up. It's not going down. think Connecticut, we're already, I think it could have gone up, but we're already at$15.69 per hour. And this is, I mean, I hire here for my real estate company as well, because you need a couple in-house people. I cannot find anybody that is any quality for less than 30 bucks an hour. It's it's ridiculous. you got your virtual assistants that have four year college degrees, you know, for less than, you know, $10 and 60 cents an hour. So that's why for us, you know, if you want to get some great help, it's just, it's not cost effective to hire someone in house. You just think about that. A, even a $50,000 salary is not only that, you know, you got to pay them. You got to pay taxes. got to pay off base. got to pay all. Yes, yes. No, that's exactly what we're going through. I mean, I'd rather hire more maintenance guys that are going around fixing issues and stuff like that. But I can't because we still need someone to manhandle the phones to require or to respond to all these inquiries and everything else that's going on. oh it allows a company to expand without breaking the bank. I love that. um I know that But so let's talk a little bit about because I think this is another thing people are worried about is the the language barrier because we've all gotten those cold calls from someone in a call center somewhere. Does it sound like they're. I literally just got one. I should play it for you too now that we're doing this, but it wasn't good. So it was not good. I think it was someone from, I don't know, whatever country it was, doesn't matter. all of our VAs, we vet them all. So we go through thousand applications per month just to get the top 5 % of those that come out the end. Okay, and does it sound like they're in a call center where there's tons of people having, okay. Because that's another problem. that's when I get a call like that, I know right away, okay, this is some virtual assistant or a scam. I can't tell. Yep. Okay. uh I'm very skeptical just like you. I am very very skeptical I thought I do the same exact thing and I listen for accents and because I'll call them right away Is this a VA? But I was majority of people you know that are taking calls don't know that it's what a virtual assistant is either. Yeah Yeah, yeah. Well, I would just like to have someone that can pick up the phone. Like right now we get, you know, at end of the day, we might have five, six, seven voicemails that we have to get back to. It'd be great if someone could actually uh answer the phone, handle the situation and like let us know if we need to be involved in it or not. Because in some cases we don't. It's just, you know, we don't. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm definitely interested in it I think that This is good. think that there's a lot of people that are out there listening to this podcast right now. They may be a realtor. They may be a real estate investor. Whatever it is they're trying to build and do, I think a VA could definitely help grow your business. um definitely, can you give us uh a way that people can connect with you and your team and your company? I mean, we're all over social. You could go directly to our website, is revaglobal.com. That's R-E-V-A global.com. There's a strategy session button on there. If you want to talk to our team, just to ask questions and you'll find out if it's a right fit. um Again, like I said, I use our virtual assistants in our own real estate business. can't own a company or sell anything unless I use it. Makes sense, makes sense. Well, Bob, it was great talking with you. I appreciate your time. uh Everyone else is out there. I will put links and everything else to your business so people can find you. Hope everyone else there is having a blessed day. God bless. m you